A Different Stripe
DESIGN
parent company announced that it would no longer be
airing a fashion show on network television. Increasingly,
it seems that pinup femininity, and the lingerie abetting it,
is becoming passé. Technology has fostered the change,
with startups and heritage brands alike seeking out high-
performance fabrications and investing in new technologies
that create a gossamer lingerie architecture. ThirdLove’s
T-shirt bra is made with a lightweight memory foam that
molds to the breast’s natural shape; Wolford, a lingerie-
department stalwart, has developed a system of 3-D silicone
printing that replaces wires and seams with nearly invisible
contouring—its 3W line, produced with the technology, has
been a blockbuster hit with customers. “Fifty percent of them
leave the store in the 3W bra they tried on,” reports Wolford’s
Robyn Breighner.
Fit is another area that has witnessed rapid advancement.
New brands are encouraging women to rethink bra sizing,
clueing them in to the fact that, for decades, we’ve been
contorting ourselves into the relatively few sizes available.
(After years of buying 34C bras, I left a fitting at the Cuup
showroom convinced I was a 32D—or, in one style, a 32E.)
“Bras are complex to make,” notes Cuup CEO Kearnon
O’Molony. “For a long time, manufacturers were getting
away with forcing women to work around a small range
of sizes because no one was challenging them. The question
we were asking was, How do you make a great-looking bra
where the experience is the same for the 32B as for the 38E?”
Whether their breasts are large or small, perky or teardrop-
shaped, women are demanding the kind of barely there
brassieres that were once the exclusive province of the flat-
chested—and in some cases they’re just demanding more
options, period. Model Ashley Graham, who has launched her
own line of larger-size bras for the brand Addition Elle, sees
this demand for more and better options as closely connected
to the body-positivity movement she’s helped spearhead.
“It’s contributed to a societal shift toward authenticity and
acceptance, empowering more women to celebrate their
bodies rather than feeling like we need to conform to a certain
size or shape to be included,” Graham says. “Customers are
no longer just purchasing—they’re participating.”
And, it turns out, when women chime in with their demands
for better bras, they get ones they don’t hate—that are sleek
and functional and made for them, rather than furbelow-
trimmed and made to induce Faster, Pussycat! proportions.
For some women, of course, that pneumatic look retains
its appeal—and that’s fine, so long as other women have the
freedom to choose something else.
“Having more choice has allowed women to make a choice,”
says ThirdLove cofounder and co-CEO Heidi Zak. “Every
woman has a bra story, and they always think: Oh, my God,
what’s wrong with me? My body’s so weird. It’s never just you!
It’s just, until recently, that’s how bra-shopping made you
feel—that you were supposed to be some other way. Now,
finally, that’s changed.”—maya singer
In the 19th century, the Danish king
Frederick VI decreed a hefty tax on
imported glass goods, spurring a local
industry for tumblers and vases that put a
Scandi minimalist spin on famous Murano
techniques. Two centuries later, the tiny
port town of Ebeltoft still lures glass-
hunting tourists—while 26 years ago, it
served as the training grounds for designer
Chris Taylor. “I have clear memories
of going to work in the dark at 10:00 in the
morning,” he says of his life in the northern
town. In 2014, he debuted his Providence, Rhode
Island–based line, Craft Advisory, and he’s since
built a steady following for his collection. His
works—produced exclusively by hand—“revere tradition
but also deviate and kind of poke a little bit at it,” he says.
Craft Advisory’s octagonal glasses, for example, are striped
with colors so opaque, they intentionally evoke plastic. “I
have to bring out shards to convince people they’re glass!”
says Taylor.—lilah ramzi
GLASS ACT
CRAFT ADVISORY’S
TWIST CUPS,
AVAILABLE AT KRB
IN NEW YORK;
WWW.KRBNYC.COM.
VLIFE
64 AUGUST 2019 VOGUE.COM
COURTESY OF CRAFT ADVISORY
