brassière

brassière The word ‘brassière’ as a description for a woman's undergarment to support and shape the breasts was first used in American Vogue magazine in 1907. In French the word originally described a small silk or velvet jacket worn under a woman's robe from the late fourteenth century, but the term is rarely used in France to describe the modern brassière. The preferred term has always been soutien-gorge (bust support), and this first appeared in 1904. So it looks as if the term ‘brassière’ was an American invention.

Women had worn corsets for centuries prior to this; they were formed and laced to control the shape and dimensions of the breasts, waist, and hips. The fashionable silhouette, at any given date, was moulded by the corset, which was always the principal structural undergarment from c.1500. However, when the corset gradually shrank in length from c.1902–8, settling below the line of the breasts, a cover and/or support was needed for them. Essentially, this already existed in various forms such as camisole tops or corset covers in lightweight fabrics, but in 1889 there was a new garment called the ‘bust bodice’. This was worn above the corset; it was lightly boned, and laced at the front and back. By 1904 bust bodices were considered essential if only for modesty, and the health-conscious firm of Jaeger produced a ‘burst girdle’ in that year, possibly one of the earliest brassières. By 1913 it was possible to buy a ‘corset cover and brassière combined’, and in 1916 it was being reported that ‘French and American women all wear them and so must we; a modiste will insist on a brassière to support the figure and give it the proper up-to-date shape’.

These early examples were fairly light, insubstantial pieces of underwear, often just bands of fabric with only the most rudimentary shaping and support, akin to the American Caresse Crosby's two triangles of fabric attached to ribbon straps, which she invented to wear under an evening dress in 1913. She sold the idea to Warner Brothers, the corset firm founded in 1874, for $1500, and later claimed the credit for having invented the brassière. These early examples gave limited support, sizing was inaccurate, and the idea of separating the breasts and having a proper fitting and assessment of correct size came only in the 1930s when Warners devised A to D cup measurements.

Brassières could flatten the breasts, as they did in the 1920s when an androgynous silhouette was fashionable, or they could divide, enhance, and uplift them, as became increasingly common from the 1930s onwards. They were also hybridized, with brassière tops being added to corsets to form the corselette, or attached to petticoats, and so forth. Experiments led to strapless versions for evening wear. Stitching, padding, and underwiring of the cups could rectify apparent deficiencies of nature, just as ‘bust improvers’ had done in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Much of the innovative work on the construction and sizing of brassières — or bras, as they tended to be called from the late 1930s — was American. The American film industry quickly recognized the potential of well-endowed actresses with breasts engineered into pointed uplift by padded, whorl-stitched, cone shaped bras, which also produced the required cleavage. The sweater girls of the 1940s and 1950s, such as Jane Russell and Lana Turner, influenced young women around the world and created demand for bras which would emphasize and uplift the breasts. Many surviving bras of this period seem to have a life of their own, with a rigidity of construction which explains the enhancing effect they could create. The reaction against this came in 1965, when Rudi Gernreich designed the ‘no-bra bra’, a lightweight, minimalist alternative which outlines the natural shape of the breast but no more. Ironically, it was only three years later, in 1968, that Gossard launched the Wonderbra, which fought back courageously for cover-girl curves. Created from twenty-six separate pieces, this was a lightly padded bra that separated and uplifted each breast to offer a décolletage of impressive grandeur with increased comfort for the wearer.

Improvements in manufacture, in the use of man-made fibres such as Lycra, and in marketing a constantly changing range of styles and colours, made underwear a fashion statement in its own right. This occurred against a background of feminist questioning of male exploitation of female sexuality. At the time of the ‘bra burning’ campaign of the 1970s, groups of young women decided to abandon bras altogether. This liberation of the body, although fine in principle, was less comfortable for larger, fuller-breasted women than for their slim, small-breasted sisters. Stretchy sports bras without hooks which could be pulled on over the head and gave light, natural support became an attractive compromise. More conventional women could select from ever wider ranges of size, style, and colour to suit their bodies and the changes in fashions worn over bras.

By the 1990s there were bras for every figure and circumstance, from pubescent teenagers to the elderly. The combined advertising power of contemporary personalities, such as the American singer Madonna's use of a designer corset and cone-shaped bra as a touring costume in the 1980s, top models promoting structural underwear such as the Wonderbra and the bustier (an elongated strapless bra), and fashions for sheer shirts, have reinvigorated the market for brassières in every size, colour, and construction. Less glamorous but equally important lines include diminisher bras for the overendowed, posture bras to reduce hunched shoulders a variety of styles for full figures which can be worn at night, and so forth. There are sports bras, nursing bras, bras designed to take prosthetic breasts for women who have undergone mastectomies. All this suggests that as an under-garment the brassière has become essential to the majority of the female population in the Western world. Despite this popularity, however, it is known that many women have never undergone a fitting for a bra and few know how to measure correctly in order to ensure that what they wear is the ultimate in comfort and support.

Valerie Cumming

Bibliography

Cartec, A. (1992). Underwear: the fashion history. Batsford.
Cunnington, C. W. and and P. (1981). The history of underclothes, (revised edition). Faber and Faber.
Ewing, E. (1971). Fashion in underwear. Batsford.
Probert, C. (1981). Lingerie in Vogue since 1910. Condé Nast.

See also clothes; female form.