Whether you love them or loathe them, resent every penny you fork out for them, buy only the best or eschew them altogether, you can’t deny that the bra isn’t a pretty iconic garment.
This month marks 100 years since the modern brassiere was invented by a 19-year-old New Yorker – and this week, women have been celebrating their place in our lives, whether that’s reminiscing about their favourite bras ever or by removing them and enjoying being ‘free’ for once.
So to mark a century’s worth of innovation in underwear, here are a few bra-related facts you may or may not know:
- Although bra-like garments are thought to date back hundreds of years, the bra as we know it today was first fashioned by Mary Phelps-Jacob, a wealthy socialite, in 1910. She was set to attend a debutante ball wearing a sheer dress and was unhappy with the way the bones of her corset poked out from the flimsy fabric. A well-endowed corset-hater, Mary asked her maid to help her attach two silk handkerchiefs together with ribbon as a means of support. Her family and friends loved the idea and wanted her to create brassieres for them too – and in 1914 she received the patent for the ‘backless brassiere’.
- Mary’s achievements didn’t just include the invention of the bra. She scandalised society when, as a married mother of two, she began an affair with Harry Crosby and divorced her husband to be with him. Mary and Harry married and moved to Paris in the 1920s, where she changed her name to Caresse. They led a decadent lifestyle involving an open marriage and plenty of drugs and parties. Later they founded publishing house Black Sun Press - showcasing early work by James Joyce, D H Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway - and Caresse even tried her hand at writing pornography.
- Cup sizes were not developed until the 1930s in the US and lettered sizes didn’t reach the UK until the ’50s. Maidenform, which first came up with the idea, wanted to rebel against the chest-flattening flapper fashions of the ’20s and provide support for women of all sizes. The flattening bras had received criticism from healthcare professionals who were worried that they could damage the breasts and hamper breastfeeding.
- Until recently, it was generally thought that the average bra size was 34B, but due to the fact that women’s breasts are getting bigger, the average is now 36D. Just a decade ago, most companies didn’t make bras any bigger than a DD cup. In the past year, department stores in the UK have started stocking J, K and even KK cups.
- The design of bras has changed with fashions over the decades. Whether it was the ‘flattening’ 1920s bras, ‘bullet’ or ‘cone’ styles of the '40s and ’50s, the more natural and comfortable look and feel of the ’60s and ’70s – when padded and underwired styles became popular - or the push-up mania of the ’90s, bra styles have evolved to suit changing tastes. Most fashion designers, however, continue to design clothes for a fairly flat-chested silhouette.
- The average American women owns six bras and US consumers spend $16 billion on them every year. A recent study showed that British women will spend an average of £2,700 on bras in a lifetime and buy four new ones a year.
- Although many feminists in the late ’60s criticised bras and what they symbolised, the much-derided story of feminists burning bras is actually a myth. Women protesting at the 1968 Miss American pageant threw items such as bras, makeup and girdles into a ‘Freedom Trashcan’ to symbolise their rejection of traditional femininity. But although they wanted to set fire to the bin, they weren’t allowed to do so. A journalist writing about the incident compared them to the draft card burning anti-Vietnam War protestors by calling them ‘bra-burners’ – and a legend was born.
Image via clotho98's Flickr