Are Underwire Bras the First Fashion Casualty of COVID-19?
From here on out, it’s all elastic and nipples.
The pandemic shutdown has caught nearly every industry off guard.
Hospitals don’t have enough PPE for staff. Grocery stores and restaurants have to rejigger their services quickly to provide curbside service. Businesses around the globe need to figure out how to allow staff to work from home.
And it’s that last item that’s driving another major industry shift: the death of the underwire bra.
Fashion industry, are you listening?
I don’t have any official information. No statistics. What I have, though, is an inside scoop (so to speak) from the market itself.
Outside of grocery shopping woes early on and the challenges of homeschooling while working, the number one conversation I’ve had with women during the pandemic has been about comfortable clothing — and more specifically, bras.
For years, women wore stretchy bras. Our hearts were crossed, and we were duly lifted and separated by the miracle of elastic. But, at some point, the fashion industry decided “the girls” needed to sit higher, and no amount of elastic was going to support that supra-armpit elevation for anything beyond a B cup.
Someone, somewhere decided that what was needed was hardware — metal, cantilever infrastructure to raise up the mammaries to give them more emphasis. And, voila, the underwire was born. Never mind that it dug into women’s rib cages, causing pain and shortness of breath. Beauty is pain, we’ve been told.
At about the same time, someone also decided that nipples were out of style.
Even though the natural shape of breasts had been seen through clothing for years, suddenly…no nipples. They became shameful bumps as we all started wearing 1/2-inch-thick memory-foam padded bras, supported by underwires. Sure, there were other innovations (back-fat reducers, push-up, and other developments).
But 90% of available bras, it seemed, had underwires.
Fast forward to 2020, when millions of working women have stopped dressing up to go to work. Suddenly working from home, the rules changed. Yoga pants and t-shirts became de rigueur.
And under those t-shirts? Well, women started to talk. Some women have ditched bras altogether. Bustier women who can’t abide flopping around have discovered newer and more comfortable undergarments: lounging bras, sports bras, bralettes, and more.
Oh, we’re talking about it. We’re sending links to each other of our new favorites. We’re putting the underwires back in the drawer. The bottom drawer. They may never come back out.
We’ve rediscovered comfort. And nipples.
And we like them.
© Tina L. Smith, 2020
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