The history of bras (brassières; variously pronounced) is closely tied to the social status of women, the evolution of fashion, and shifting views of the female body over time. Throughout history, women have used various garments to support, cover, restrain, reveal, enhance, or modify the appearance of their breasts. Artifacts from the Minoan civilization, dating back to the 14th century BCE, depict women wearing bikini-like garments. Some evidence suggests that during the Greco-Roman period, women had developed specialized bra-like garments to support their breasts. By the 14th century CE, the proto-bra was in development in Europe. From approximately the 16th century CE onward, the corset dominated the undergarments of wealthier women in the Western world. Corsets came in varying lengths, with some designed only to support the bust, while others extended down to shape the waist. In the latter part of the 19th century, women experimented with various alternatives, such as splitting the corset into a girdle-like shaping device for the lower torso and transferring the upper part to devices suspended from the shoulder. By the early 20th century, garments emerged that more closely resembled contemporary bras; however, large-scale commercial production only occurred in the 1930s. The metal shortages of World War I encouraged the demise of the corset, and most fashion-conscious women in Europe and North America were wearing bras by the end of the war. The bra was then adopted by women in other parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Antiquity
Greece
Literature from Ancient Greece suggests the use of a specialized garment meant to support and contain women's breasts. In Book 14 of Homer's Iliad, written in the archaic period of classical antiquity, Homer refers to Aphrodite's "embroidered girdle" (Ancient Greek: κεστός ἱμάς, kestós himás) as being "loosed from her breasts", indicating a decorated breast-band rather than a girdle or belt, as is often interpreted. At least one example of late-Hellenic sculpture seems to confirm this, depicting the goddess wrapping a stróphion (from stróphos "twisted band" + the diminutive suffix -ion) around her chest. Aristophanes mentions the stróphion in his plays Lysistrata and Women at the Thesmophoria. However, it is unknown if the stróphion was an everyday garment worn by the average woman or an item of clothing reserved for certain situations or specific types of women. Artifacts from the Minoan civilization, dating back to the 14th century BCE, depict women wearing bikini-like garments. However, most early Grecian sculpture and vase paintings that depict undressed women show no indication of breast bands, instead revealing the shape of the breast through draped clothing, or even the nipple itself, with no sign of an intervening item of clothing between dress and skin.
Rome The Roman adaptation of the strophium was mentioned in writings by Martial, Ovid, and in the Scriptores Historiae Augustae as the fascia, fasciola, taenia, or mamillare. This garment was made from various materials. It is depicted in the Coronation of the Winner mosaic, nicknamed "Bikini Mosaic", dated to the 4th century CE, at Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, Sicily. In the mosaic, the bra-wearing women are participating in sporting events. In addition, some large-breasted Roman women wore a mamillare under tunics and togas because Romans considered large breasts to be "grandmotherly".
The Middle Ages By the High Middle Ages, some women in Western Europe were using bra-like garments to support and restrain their breasts. Both Henri de Mondeville, surgeon to King Phillip the Fair of France, and Konrad Stolle, writing over a hundred years apart (c. 1315 CE and c. 1480 CE, respectively), mention "breast bags" or "shirts with bags" that women used to contain their breasts. Stolle called these inventions "indecent". A 15th-century anonymous German writer said many women made and wore these garments, noting the benefits for one woman: "All the young men that look at her, can see her beautiful breasts..." In this era, women of status wore clothing that required specialized undergarments with separated cups that lifted and separated the breasts. 15th-century playing cards and illustrated manuscripts provide visible evidence of these garments. In 2008, fragments of four bra-like undergarments were discovered in Lengberg Castle in Austria. Dating to the 15th century, the garments represent three different designs but all had separate cups. They were probably worn attached to skirts, but the skirts were removed when the garments were discarded, perhaps to reuse the fabric.
The corset
Bodies The inventor of the corset is unclear, but it appeared around the turn of the 16th century CE. During this period, the lifted, separated "apple breasts" look of the Middle Ages, began to go out of fashion and was replaced with the look of a compressed bust. The corset was originally called a paire de corps or "a pair of bodies" in English because they came in two pieces. It gave the chest and torso a smooth, conical shape that worked with the farthingale to create the illusion of a tiny waist. In the mid-17th century, pairs of bodies began to be called "stays" and were usually boned with baleen instead of reeds. Some of these bodies were made in one piece but retained the same general shape and did not feature cups like a bra. This style remained unchanged until the end of the 18th century.
Short stays In the 1780s and 1790s, the shape of stays changed radically to suit the changing fashions. However, many of these "shortened stays" or "short stays", as they were sometimes called in Britain, resembled earlier support Middle Ages garments more than stays, with fitted cups that held the breasts apart and bands only as wide as the ribs or shorter, instead of waist-length. Around this time, the French started to refer to stays as corsets.
Victorian era
Victorian dress reform movement
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