Weeks ago I started a series of useful items and their everyday origin. I have had many wonderful comments, so I will do a few more.
What's the story behind the brassiere? In Egypt and Crete most men and women were scantily clad in loin clothes or skirts that hung from the waist or just below the breasts. Minoan murals show some women wearing an early bra-type device designed to emphasize the bust by pushing their breasts up and clear of their clothes. Ancient Greek and Roman women sometimes favored the opposite esthetic and strapped their bosom down with strips of cloth to give a flat-chested appearance, a fashion revived more than 2,000 years later by the flappers of the 1920s. (Some of us can accomplish this look without the tape!)
Flappers were breaking with a fashion tradition that had persisted since 16th-century Europe, when "wasp waists" first came into vogue. Corsets or bodices with drawstrings and whalebone or metal stays not only "cinched" waists but also emphasized their narrowness by accentuating the hips and bosom. In the last 18th-century "falsies" first appeared in the form of so-called bust improvers of wool, cotton or wax, which were inserted into the bust area of the bodice. American Mary Phelps Jacob is usually credited with the invention of the brassiere in 1913. In 1875 George Frost and George Phelps patented Union Under-Flannel-ladies' underwear that had no stays or drawstrings. In 1913 Mary Phelps Jacob was a young debutante preparing to attend a party in a sheer gown she had just purchased. Concerned that a traditional corset would ruin the line of the new dress, she enlisted the help of her maid and devised a makeshift substitute by sewing together two handkerchiefs and some ribbon. She ended up patenting her "backless brassiere" in 1914. The brassiere gained ascendancy by the onset of World War I.
As women switched to bras more than 28,000 tons of metal were freed up from making corsets. Elastic fibers were introduced in the 1920s, standardized cup-sizes in the 1930s and in the 1940s fashion favored an ever-increasing bust size.
We can't live with them and we can't live without them. Sound familiar?
Comments or questions: email@example.com.
Read more Sally Cowan online