FASHION Around Memorial Day, 2011, I realized I
had a bra problem. I was headed to London
for the summer, and the mini-move entailed a radical
wardrobe edit—I was adamant I’d pack only things that
I genuinely loved and regularly wore, and nothing in
my overstuffed lingerie drawer fit the bill. I had flimsy,
candy-colored “sexy” bras that were impractical to wear.
I had T-shirt bras with heavy molded cups that I wore but
devoutly despised because they made me feel like I had
a pair of dirigibles strapped to my chest. There were latter-
day versions of the legendary WonderBra that seemed
to set my breasts on a platter and offer them to the world
as a gift. And then—my secret favorite—I had a comfy,
tank-style Jockey sports bra that did absolutely nothing
for my tits. How is it possible, I wondered, that capitalism
had yet to provide me with copious options for bras that
I did not hate?
Lo these many years later, capitalism has come through.
Women are living in an entirely different universe of
underpinnings than they were just a few years ago.
The sports bra I own now is a hoisting, stabilizing feat of
German engineering made by the brand Anita, and
I would never in a million years think to use it for anything
but running, because my lingerie drawer is now filled with
bras that are chic, gently supportive, and featherweight—to
wit the wire-free, micromesh bralette by New York City–
based brand Negative Underwear, one of several newcomers
to the lingerie marketplace, that I’m wearing as I write this.
“We looked around at the fashion we loved, which was all
very minimal—brands like The Row, and Céline when Phoebe
Philo was designing it—and it just didn’t seem like there was
a bra for the woman buying those clothes,”
explains Negative’s cofounder Marissa
Vosper about the impetus for the brand’s
launch a few years ago.
Negative’s debut followed on the heels
of ThirdLove, the popular direct-to-
consumer lingerie brand that offers simple
styles in a dazzling array of sizes, and it’s been followed by the
launch of other labels with a similar remit. Not coincidentally,
many of these brands were founded or cofounded by women.
Cuup, launched in November, is typical in that its products
reflect the simple goal articulated by cofounder Abby Morgan.
“I wanted to embrace my natural shape,” she says.
“More often than not, the ideal breast is an invented
breast,” wrote science columnist Natalie Angier in Woman:
An Intimate Geography, published in 1999. “Breasts vary
in size and shape to an outlandish degree, but they can be
whipped into an impressive conformity.” The striking thing
about the new, minimalist lingerie brands is that they aren’t
really offering a silhouette proposition—they provide a range
of styles meant to enhance women’s genetically determined
breasts rather than sculpt them to match a culturally ordained
ideal. You can see the same kind of shift in the move toward
shapewear that smooths rather than suctions, like that made
by cult-favorite brand Yummie.
“When you look at a push-up bra now, it looks so...
foreign,” says superstylist Mel Ottenberg, who has worked
with Rihanna, among others. “Like, it used to seem so normal,
and now cool girls are wearing Baserange and it’s all totally
unstructured. You just don’t want—or need—that kind of lift
if you’re wearing Erdem or Loewe or Valentino.”
Is it possible that our POV on bras and breasts is
undergoing one of those cyclical readjustments, as when
women in the 1960s took a hard look at their pointy bullet
bras and thought, To hell with this? That’s how I feel when
I look back at the famous WonderBra ad from 1994 with Eva
Herzigova staring gleefully down at her bolstered breasts
next to the tagline hello boys. Pardon me for believing that
a bra ought to be made for the people wearing it—not some
hypothetical male gaze.
“If you look back, the idea of ‘sexy’ wasn’t owned by
women so much,” says Cuup’s Morgan. “Whereas now it’s
more about sensuality and how a woman feels.”
If you had to isolate the moment when this pivot began,
it would be sometime in 2013. That year, the Victoria’s
Secret Fashion Show was watched live by an astounding
9.7 million people in the U.S.; one month later, ThirdLove
launched. Earlier this year, Victoria’s Secret’s
Bust and Boom
The age of bras that thrust and pinch is
over: Today’s lingerie brands don’t only fit
better—they feel better, too.
WHAT LIES
BENEATH
AMBER VALLETTA,
PHOTOGRAPHED
BY STEVEN MEISEL,
VOGUE, 2002.
FASHION>64
VLIFE
58 AUGUST 2019 VOGUE.COM
