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Brassiere
Mary Phelps Jacob After decades of stuffing themselves into seemingly
barbaric undergarments of a mostly corset-like nature, women around the world
finally began to get fed up. In 1913, a New York socialite decided to do something
about it: the first modern brassiere was created by Mary Phelps Jacob. She patented
her design, and now the brassiere is a standard part of nearly every modern
woman's wardrobe.
Jacob came up with the idea for her brassiere after she bought an evening
gown for an event she was planning to attend. At the time, women wore corsets
stiffened with whaleback bones and steel rods. She tried on the dress with one
of these corsets, however, and found that the whalebones poked out visibly around
the plunging neckline and under the sheer fabric.
Jacob had a better idea. She took two silk handkerchiefs and some pink ribbon,
and fashioned herself, with the help of her maid, the very first bra. Family
and friends almost immediately asked Jacob to create brassieres for them, too.
One day, she received a request for one of her contraptions from a stranger,
who had offered a dollar for her efforts. She knew then that this could become
a viable business. On November 3, 1914, she was awarded a patent for the "Backless
Brassiere". The undergarment name "brassiere" was derived from the
old french word for "upper arm".
Then, Jacob set up a business, using the name Caresse Crosby instead of her
own. Later she sold the brassiere patent to the Warner Brothers Corset Company
in Bridgeport, Connecticut for $1,500. The Warner Brothers Corset Company made
$15 million dollars from the bra over the next 30 years.
It is important to note that Jacobs did not invent the first bra ever. Her
design was simply the first one to be widely used. It appears that a woman named
Marie Tucek patented the first brassiere in 1893. Her device included separate
pockets for the breasts, straps that went over the shoulder which were fastened
by hook-and-eye closures. Jacobs' patent was for a device that was lightweight
and flattened the breasts, but her bra did not have cups to support the breasts.
Many innovations were made to the brassiere throughout the years, including
the use of elastic and standard cup sizes, for example. In 1928, a Russian immigrant
named Ida Rosenthal founded Maidenform.
Rosenthal was responsible for grouping women into bust size categories (cup
sizes).
It has been said that the bra, as it came to be called in the 1930s, took
off the way it did all because of World War I. The War shook up gender roles,
putting many women to work in factories and uniforms for the first time. Then,
in 1917, the U.S. War Industries Board asked women to stop buying corsets to
free up metal. They did stop buying corsets, which freed up some 28,000 tons
of metal -- enough to build two battleships.
Jacob died in 1970, but she lived long enough to see the bra go through a
number of transformations and become immensely popular all over the world. She
was also politically active and founded the organization Women Against War.
[November 2001]
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