Underwear varies by culture, by social class, and most obviously, by gender. It has a long, colorful, and occasionally embarrassing history, and serves a surprisingly wide range of purposes. People tend to think of underwear as a kind of “default,” assuming ‘everyone wears what I wear,’ but that’s far from the truth.
Take the brassiere. Although there is a long, even ancient history of women wearing some kind of covering on the top to cover or restrain their breasts, the brassiere as we know it was not manufactured until the 1930s. Prior to that, there is a long history of women wearing various upper-half undergarments, but mostly corsets. Some were designed to make the breasts appear larger or rounder, but the modern bra was originally designed for modesty and restraint.
The first modern bra was designed at home by a woman named Mary Phelps Jacob in 1910. She needed something that would work with a sheer evening gown that had a plunging neckline. Her corset showed through. When she turned this into a business, though, it didn’t really take off.
In the 1920s, the flapper look was fashionable, and that included a flat-chested silhouette. Bras were designed to flatten and reduce, and this was the case until the Maidenform (then Maiden Form) company introduced bras designed to shape individual woman’s busts, and brings us into the 1930s, by which time, a bra recognizable to the modern woman was available.
From corsetry to brassieres, women eventually became more comfortable, what with all that whalebone and metal out of the picture. Women’s fashion, and women’s undergarments, are in part a product of women’s freedom: If it is not acceptable for a woman to be out and about in society, then she doesn’t need clothes that allow for freedom of movement, and thus a tight, long-line corset can make sense. Solidifying the death of the corset were metal shortages during World War II, which made simpler styles with less metal more practical.
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