National Lingerie Day: How World War I revolutionized women’s underwear and popularized the modern bra

Today, April 25, is National Lingerie Day in the United States - but it could just as easily be celebrated on November 3.

That’s the date on which Mary Phelps Jacob, an American socialite credited with popularizing the modern bra, received a U.S. patent for her ‘backless brassiere’ in 1914.

Although Jacob herself reaped limited financial profit from her creation, the onset of World War I that same year ultimately provided the springboard for the bra’s widespread adoption.

Bra busts corset domination

Also known as Caresse Crosby, Jacob was by no means the first person to come up with an alternative to the corset - a stiff, tight-fitting, full-torso garment which, for centuries, had been Western society’s prevailing source of bust support for women.

In 1893, for example, a woman named Marie Tucek was granted a U.S. patent for a ‘breast supporter’ bearing a design similar to the bra as we know it.

And before the corset emerged as a go-to undergarment in Europe around the 16th century, there is evidence of early bras being worn as far back as ancient Rome and Greece, notes Vogue’s Christina Pérez.

However, it is Jacob’s invention that is deemed chiefly responsible for launching a bra industry that was valued at $36.3 billion worldwide in 2022, according to figures compiled by Allied Market Research. By 2023, moreover, it is projected to grow to $59.5 billion.

How did Jacob create the ‘backless brassiere’?

Around 1910, a 19-year-old Jacob was getting ready for a debutante ball, but found that her corset’s metal frame protruded from her evening gown.

“Bring me two of my pocket handkerchiefs and some pink ribbon,” Jacob reportedly told her maid.

She then sewed together a garment that was “lightweight [and you would] tie it around your neck,” explains Lynn Boorady, a professor of design and merchandising, in a 2014 interview with Time.

The ‘backless brassiere’ was born. “It looks like a halter top bikini, I guess, but not quite so conforming,” Boorady told Time’s Laura Stampler, who added: “Compared to the restrictive, metal corsets that women were used to jamming their bodies into, the bra was the epitome of relief.”

Jacob sells bra patent before WWI boosts popularity

Jacob’s invention, NPR’s Melissa Pandika reveals, gained no shortage of attention from other female ball-goers, who asked her how she enjoyed such freedom of movement while dancing.

Spurred on by the interest it had engendered, Jacob began selling her bra and, in 1914, patented her design.

But her garment did not truly take off in popularity until the U.S.’s involvement in World War I brought about a sharp decline in the use of the corset around America. By that point, Jacob had sold her patent, having struggled to make her business a success.

Jacob’s patent was bought in 1915 by the Warner Brothers Corset Company, for $1,500 - around $45,000 in today’s money, per the Amortisation.org inflation calculator.

The investment proved spectacularly profitable for the Bridgeport, Connecticut company. Over the next three decades, according to a Lemelson MIT history of the bra, the garment made the firm an estimated $15 million.

How did WWI help to popularize the bra?

World War I proved a turning point for the bra for two major reasons.

Firstly, in 1917 - the year America entered the conflict - the U.S. War Industries Board asked women in the country to stop buying corsets, as the metal used for their frames was needed for military equipment such as weapons and ammunition.

A second chief factor, meanwhile, was the way the Great War “shook up gender roles”, notes Lemelson MIT.

Notably, the war effort led large numbers of women to be put to work in hitherto male-dominated jobs on farms and in factories, completing tasks that required physical exertion and freedom of bodily movement. The restrictive corset was, clearly, ill-suited to this.

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