The 20th Century and The Modern Era Bra
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In 1910, Mary Phelps Jacob (nicknamed "Polly" and known later in life as Caresse Crosby), a 19-year-old New York socialite, purchased a sheer evening gown for a social event. At that time, the only acceptable undergarment was a corset stiffened with whalebone. Polly had large breasts and found that the whalebone visibly poked out around her plunging neckline and from under the sheer fabric. Dissatisfied with this arrangement, she worked with her maid to fashion two silk handkerchiefs together with some pink ribbon and cord. Her innovation drew immediate attention that evening and, at the request of family and friends, she made more of her new device. When she received a request for one from a stranger, who offered a dollar for her efforts, she realized that her device could turn into a viable business.
On 3 November 1914, the U.S. Patent Office issued the first U.S. patent for the "Backless Brassiere". Her patent was for a device that was lightweight, soft, comfortable to wear, and naturally separated the breasts, unlike the corset, which was heavy, stiff, uncomfortable, and had the effect of creating a "monobosom".
She managed to secure a few orders from department stores, but her business never took off. Her husband Harry Crosby discouraged her from pursuing the business and persuaded her to close it. She later sold the brassiere patent to the Warners Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for US$1,500 (roughly equivalent to $20,827 in current dollars). Warner manufactured the "Crosby" bra for a while, but it did not become a popular style and eventually was discontinued. Warner went on to earn more than $15 million from the bra patent over the next thirty years.
Bras became more common and more widely promoted over the course of the 1910s, aided by the continuing trend towards lighter, shorter corsets that offered increasingly less bust support and containment. In 1917, the U.S. War Industries Board asked women to stop buying corsets to free up metal for war production. This was said to have saved some 28,000 tons of metal, enough to build two battleships.
It has been said that the bra took off the way it did in large part because of the first World War, which shook up gender roles, putting many women to work in factories and uniforms for the first time. The war also influenced social attitudes toward women and helped to liberate them from corsets. But women were already moving into the retail and clerical sectors. Thus the bra "came out", from something ("bust girdle") discreetly tucked into the back pages of women's magazines in the 1890s, to prominent display in department stores such as Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward by 1918. Advertising was now promoting the shaping of the bust to contemporary fashion demands, and sales reflected this.
Read more about this topic: History Of Brassieres
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