History of Bras Part 2

From Corsets to Cleavage: How the Modern Bra Changed the 20th Century

In Part One, we discovered that women had been supporting, covering and reshaping their breasts for centuries before anything resembling our modern bra appeared. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, fashions and women's lives were changing, clothing manufacture was becoming more sophisticated and people were experimenting with ways of supporting the breasts without relying on a traditional full corset.

The result wasn't one clever person suddenly waking up one morning and inventing “the bra”. Lots of people contributed to its development — and once it arrived, fashion immediately started messing around with the shape of women's breasts all over again.

So who actually invented the bra?

This sounds as though it ought to have a nice simple answer.

Unfortunately, history rarely behaves itself like that.

An important early figure was French corset-maker Herminie Cadolle, whose company exhibited an early form of the modern bra at the Paris International Exhibition in 1889. Her work separated support for the breasts from some of the shaping traditionally provided by the corset. (vam.ac.uk)

Then, in America, Mary Phelps Jacob — later known as Caresse Crosby — patented her “Backless Brassiere” in 1914. Her patent described a soft, simple garment without bones, designed partly so that it could be worn beneath fashionable low-backed clothes. The patent was granted on 3 November 1914. (patents.google.com)

So when somebody asks “Who invented the bra?”, the slightly irritating but more accurate answer is that there isn't really one inventor. The modern bra evolved through several designs and ideas. Even the Metropolitan Museum describes earlier brassiere-like garments before crediting Jacob's 1914 patent as an important point in the development of the modern version. (metmuseum.org)

The 1920s: suddenly breasts were terribly inconvenient

You might imagine that once women were moving away from the full corset, bras would immediately be designed to lift and celebrate the bust.

Not quite.

The fashionable 1920s figure was famously straight and almost boyish. Dresses dropped loosely from the shoulders, with far less emphasis on the waist and bust than previous fashions. The bras underneath followed suit. Surviving examples from the period are often very soft and bandeau-like, and women with fuller breasts could use sturdier versions to bind them closer to the body and create the fashionable straight shape. (metmuseum.org)

So after centuries of experimenting with ways to support the breasts, fashion had temporarily reached the conclusion that the ideal solution was apparently to pretend they weren't there.

Don't worry. It changed its mind again.

The 1930s, 40s and 50s bring breasts back

By the 1930s the natural curves of the body were becoming more visible again, and bras developed increasingly defined cups. After the Second World War, breast shape became even more structured. The famous late-1940s and 1950s silhouette sat high on the chest, with bras using carefully shaped cups, stitching and underwires to direct the bust.

The Metropolitan Museum's collection includes a late-1940s bra with dramatically shaped cups and describes the 1950s as a period of increasingly elaborate bra technology: underwires, different paddings and removable inserts could lift, separate or bring the breasts together depending on the result wanted. (metmuseum.org)

And this is the point where the history starts to feel very familiar to me.

Breast enhancers aren't really a new idea at all. Women have been adding something inside their bras to change their shape for generations. The materials and designs have come on enormously, of course — today's soft silicone breast enhancers are rather different from some of the structured padding available seventy years ago — but the principle is much the same. Sometimes you want a bit more fullness. Sometimes you want lift or cleavage. Sometimes an outfit simply looks better when the bra underneath is a little fuller.

That's exactly what my modern breast enhancers are designed to do: they work with the breast you already have to alter the shape, fullness or lift rather than creating an entirely new breast.

I rather like knowing that when we pop a breast enhancer into a bra today, we're actually joining quite a long tradition of women quietly persuading fashion to do what we want.

The 1960s: underwear gets softer — and political

Technology matters almost as much as fashion in the history of underwear. New stretch fabrics made it possible to produce lighter, more flexible garments, and bras gradually moved further away from the heavy structures that had dominated earlier generations.

But during the 1960s the bra also became something much bigger than an item of underwear. It became a symbol in arguments about women, appearance and the expectations placed on our bodies.

Which brings us to one of those historical “facts” everybody seems to know.

Did feminists really burn their bras?

The famous story says that feminists protesting at the 1968 Miss America pageant burned their bras.

They didn't.

More than 200 women took part in the protest in Atlantic City. They objected to beauty standards which they felt judged women primarily by their appearance and threw bras, girdles, curlers and other symbolic items into a “Freedom Trash Can”. But the wooden boardwalk was a rather obvious fire risk, officials asked them not to light anything, and no ceremonial pile of burning bras ever happened. (smithsonianmag.com)

Somehow, though, “bra-burning feminists” was simply too good a phrase to let reality get in the way, and the myth stuck.

I think the real protest is actually more interesting. The women weren't really protesting against one particular item of underwear. They were challenging the wider idea that women should constantly change themselves to meet other people's standards of attractiveness.

More than fifty years later, I think we can safely say that particular conversation hasn't entirely gone away.

The sports bra arrives — thanks partly to a jockstrap

By the 1970s, growing numbers of women were running and taking part in sport, which revealed a rather obvious flaw in ordinary bras.

They weren't designed for it.

In 1977, Lisa Lindahl, Polly Smith and Hinda Miller began working on a bra that would control painful breast movement during exercise. One of the early ideas famously involved two men's athletic supporters — jockstraps — sewn together, eventually developing into the Jogbra and helping to establish the modern sports-bra category.

It sounds wonderfully Heath Robinson, but it worked.

What I really like about the sports bra in this story is that it asks a completely different question. So much historic underwear was built around “How should a woman's body look?” The sports bra was primarily asking “What does a woman's body need to be able to do this comfortably?”

Sometimes progress doesn't need to be terribly glamorous. Sometimes it just needs to stop your boobs hurting while you run.

And then cleavage comes roaring back

Fashion hadn't finished changing its mind.

By the later twentieth century, padded and push-up bras became hugely popular. Instead of the separated, pointed breasts associated with the 1950s, many designs aimed to lift the breasts and push them together to create fuller cleavage.

Once again, the fashionable shape had changed — and once again, underwear was being used to encourage our bodies to cooperate.

This is where modern breast enhancers make complete sense within the history. Rather than needing a particular padded bra, an enhancer lets you alter the effect inside a bra you already own. Depending on the style, that might mean filling a slightly gaping cup, giving a natural breast a little more fullness, balancing uneven breasts, creating more projection from the side or encouraging more cleavage.

You certainly don't need to change your breasts — but if you want to, we've become rather better at giving you options.

What about breast forms?

There is another modern option which does a different job, and this is where the language can become confusing.

Breast enhancers work with existing breast tissue. They add to what is already there.

Breast forms create the breast shape itself.

My silicone breast forms are therefore designed for people who want to create a fuller breast rather than simply boost an existing one. That includes many of my trans customers, people who cross-dress and women who use breast forms following surgery. The reasons can be very different, but the basic idea is the same: choosing the breast shape that works for you, rather than accepting that everybody somehow ought to start with the same body.

And I think that is quite a lovely point for this whole history to arrive at.

We finally have something rather wonderful: choice

I don't think we've reached some glorious age in which society no longer has opinions about women's breasts. Five minutes on social media should cure anyone of that idea.

But we do have far more choice than most of the women in this story.

You can wear a heavily structured underwired bra, a push-up bra, a minimiser, a sports bra, a soft bralette or something with virtually no structure at all. You can add fullness with breast enhancers, create a complete breast shape with breast forms, minimise what you have — or leave everything entirely alone.

And there isn't one “correct” reason for choosing any of them.

Someone might want fuller breasts because she feels fabulous with cleavage. Someone else wants to even up natural asymmetry. A trans woman might simply want to look in the mirror and see the shape that feels right to her. Someone may want a breast form after surgery. Another woman just wants that gorgeous dress to sit properly on Saturday night.

All perfectly valid.

The bra never really had one job

What I find most fascinating after looking through this history is that there has never actually been one ideal breast shape.

At different points women have bound their breasts flatter, lifted them higher, separated them, pointed them, padded them and pushed them together. One generation was told breasts were too obvious and the next was given underwear specifically designed to make them more so.

Too small. Too large. Too low. Too far apart. Too noticeable. Not noticeable enough.

We've heard pretty much everything.

So perhaps the most positive development in the history of the bra isn't the underwire, Lycra, the sports bra or even a particularly clever bit of padding.

It's that we now have enough options to decide for ourselves.

Your breasts don't have to follow fashion. Fashion can work around you.