Massive cultural changes during and after World War I helped free women from the confined roles and confined corsets that bound them to the previous age. The evolution of the bra has redefined the image of what a woman can be, whether she is participating in the war effort, fighting for the right to vote, or dancing in a dress. valve at the end of the war.
Bra history
Coronation of the winner, detail of the mosaic of ten young girls at Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily
DeAgostini / Getty Images
“No one invented the corset or the bra,” says Valerie Steele, director of the museum at the Institute of Fashion Technology. “They were developed in different places and many people have filed for patents over the years, improving or modifying their design.” Some of the earliest bras date back to ancient Rome: “The mosaics at Villa Romano del Casals in Sicily show strophium, a simple fabric breast binding,” says Judith Dolan, distinguished professor and head of design at the University. from California to San Diego.
By 1500, corsets – tight, structured undergarments stretching from below the breasts to the hips – became the undergarment of choice for middle and upper class women in much of Europe. The tightened corset would reign supreme until the 20the century, when women began to breathe better thanks to the bra.
While a 600-year-old prototype bra was recently discovered in a castle in Austria, credit for inventing the first ‘modern’ bra goes to French designer Herminie Cadolle, who cut a corset in two in 1869 and called it the “throat corselet.” Cadolle’s creation was then seen as a bit outrageous. It would take world events – and a patent – for the bra to really take off.
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First patent
American socialite Mary “Polly” Phelps Jacob patented the “bra” on November 3, 1914, when World War I broke out in Europe. Filing the patent under the pseudonym “Caresse Crosby,” she invented the concept while dressing for a ball, when her uncomfortable corset slipped through her gown, prompting her and her maid to sew together two handkerchiefs for a ball. offer more flexible support. .
Her business never really took off (although it would shake up the publishing world in Paris, printing the work of authors like Ernest Hemingway, Anais Nin, and James Joyce), and she sold her patent to the Warner Brothers. Corset Company. for a paltry $ 1,500. By the time the United States joined World War I in 1917, the influence of European fashions and the changing role of women helped open the floodgates for women to ditch their corsets and kiss the bra.
READ MORE: Women’s Revolutionary Inventions
Fashion change from France
Paul Poiret and his tailor, during a fitting, c. 1925.
Roger Viollet / Getty Images
“In 1900, women wore corsets and dresses that covered the neck to the ankles. In the 1920s, the hems were at mid-calf and more and more women wore soft bras and belts instead of corsets, ”says Steele.
French designers had a disproportionate impact on global fashion, and at the start of the 20e French designers of the century like Paul Poiret and Chanel championed a straight silhouette, not the hourglass bestowed by a corset. In his 1931 autobiography, not so humbly titled The king of fashion, the couturier Poiret claimed the only credit for the bra by writing: “it is in the name of Liberty that I proclaimed the fall of the corset and the adoption of the bra …. Yes, I released the bust. ”
Steele refutes this bold claim, citing the hundreds of years of fashion history behind Poiret… and the cultural shifts happening all around him.
Women in World War I
“The influence of World War I really made bra support. Before it was this exciting and different underwear. World War I changes the role of women in the world, ”says Lora Vogt, curator of education at the National WWI Museum and Memorial. “It was a time of turmoil that brought about a major and catastrophic change. People looked at their lives differently, looked at how they could give to the community as a whole. Women began to work in the war industry, ammunition. You can’t do that with a corset, ”says Vogt.
Nine million women joined the American war effort in various capacities. “Women serving overseas received a stipend to support themselves in their underwear,” says Vogt. And there were quite a few women looking for underwear to match their new roles.
In June 1918, more than 3,000 Americans were nurses in more than 750 hospitals in France. Nearly 12,000 women joined the navy as yeoman, or non-commissioned officers, working as mechanics, truck drivers, radio and telephone operators, translators and munitions workers. Seven thousand women applied as so-called “Hello Girls,” switchboard operators working for the US Army Signals Corps, 223 of whom were sent overseas.
On the home front, women have also mobilized to work on once male-dominated railways, on farms and in factories. Seeing women in these new roles changed public opinion about what women were capable of, even President Woodrow Wilson said that women’s suffrage was “of vital importance to the successful continuation of the Great War of the United States. ‘humanity in which we are engaged’. These new roles required new, freer clothes and underwear.
READ MORE: When American Women Served as Medics on the Frontlines of World War I
Rationing of the First World War
Women rivets and bystanders on ship construction work in the Navy Yard at Puget Sound in Seattle, Washington, May 29, 1919.
MPI / Getty Images
Women at home were asked to reconsider many aspects of their lives, from the food they put on the table to what they wore under their dresses. In 1917, the chairman of the US War Industries Board, Bernard Baruch, asked women to stop buying corsets. Most corsets of the time were no longer made with whalebone, but with metal reinforcements – a metal that could be better used for the war effort. The women were eager to prove their patriotism, and NPR reports that 28,000 tons of steel were diverted, enough to build two battleships.
As for the corset, while it was eclipsed by the bra in decades to come, its promise of a more slender figure never entirely disappeared. As Steele explains, women have constantly adjusted their appearance to the ideal body type of a given era, whether through underwear or otherwise.
“Women never really gave up on the corset,” Steele says. “They internalized it through diet and exercise, tummy tucks and liposuction. Once the clothes started showing more skin, you actually had to change your body or have a different attitude towards your body.”
