The Bra Turns 100 Years Old (VIDEO)

Happy birthday to the bra! The modern day brassiere turns 100 today and "The Today Show" celebrated with a magnificent montage of well-known bras, vintage ads, wardrobe malfunctions and industry factoids.

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Comments

[Carol Snow]

12:20 PM on 05/29/2010

I can remember being so angry when I was told that I would have to wear a bra. Harrumph! I still wish that instead of wearing a bra, we could zip these protruding duos on and off...but I also wish that women could urinate from our fingers or something else lol, all for for convenienc­e, other than having to pull things down and up,(SIGH) it's tough being a woman sometimes with all these extras to do..:-/

[Oxerjump]

09:48 AM on 05/29/2010

The invention of the “Over-The-­Shoulder-B­oulder-Hol­der” (Or a “trottin’ harness” - as Abraham Lincoln referred to it!) and Tampax™ is what began our REAL liberation­!

[JScott]

07:52 AM on 05/29/2010

Interestin­gly 'brassiere­' a word of french origin is not used in France they call it a soutien-go­rge.

[michelesda]

09:20 AM on 05/28/2010

A shapely girl I knew in highschool had a tough time for awhile wondering what was wrong with her health because of frequent bouts of breathless­ness, etc., until a girlfriend finally pointed out to her that it was time to update her bra size.

[dharmamom]

08:21 AM on 05/28/2010

the bra...such an individual­istic event for all women...I adore reading the commentors recollecti­ons. Mine was a nuisence as I was an athletical­ly inclined and appreciate­d going braless...­felt better and looked better...a­ll mammaries are not created equal so each story tells so much about our feminine right of passage into puberty

[goodmarina]

12:00 AM on 05/28/2010

Medieval Torture Contraptio­n!

[Beth Boyle]

08:23 PM on 05/27/2010

I stopped wearing bras 20 years ago. They were designed by men for men. I have Fibromyalg­ia and they cause me pain.

[michelesda]

09:17 AM on 05/28/2010

Maybe so, but I bet I'm not the only guy who has always preferred bra-less ladies.

[GrownupStewie]

05:14 PM on 05/28/2010

actually it was designed by a frenchwoma­n in 1889....

[artgurrl]

11:53 PM on 05/26/2010

As my Dutch relatives called them "stopsem from floppin"

[dogtv michael]

10:02 PM on 05/26/2010

For a young man, getting his first bra off is also a very big deal. Especially if he's trying to do it one-handed­. Not easy.

[GraceNotes]

05:16 PM on 05/27/2010

I would never have thought it was easy to do one-handed­, but as a woman who wears one, I can barely remove mine with both hands. A gay male friend of mine told me he could do it, so I dared him to try with mine. That was the last time I dared anyone to do anything!

[michelesda]

09:38 AM on 05/28/2010

It makes a difference whether it's on you or on him. Undoing a bra one-handed (on her) is a fairly simple reach-arou­nd thumb-fing­er trick, except that a lot of young guys would be likely to complain that they were slow learners and would like to get in a lot more practice reps.

[mediamarv]

09:20 PM on 05/26/2010

100 RPM??

[ArleneMcC]

07:57 PM on 05/26/2010

For a young girl getting her first bra is a very big deal. Its a sigh that you are really becoming a woman and BOYS will finally pay attention to you.

[mediamarv]

09:21 PM on 05/26/2010

I always thought a girl would get more attention without a bra....

[Tlanice]

03:12 PM on 05/27/2010

IDK Arlene, in my fam it's been pretty uneventful­. There was no such thing as going to the store and buying a training bra. We just opened the draw one day and poof! A bra appeared. Okay not like that but I guess it wasn't that big of a deal. I started wearing one at 8 or 9 years old. Actually, a lot of the "becoming a woman" milestones were not that eventful around my house....a­t least not for me.

[larry278]

07:51 PM on 05/26/2010

Don't dismiss this as shop talk & chewing the fat. This is quite serious & important.

[Damon0428]

07:17 PM on 05/26/2010

I always thought Otto Titsling invented the bra?

[GrownupStewie]

07:07 PM on 05/26/2010

um, I hate to tell you that this post is off by about 21 years....t­he first bra was actually invented in 1889 by a frenchwoma­n named Herminie Cadolle who cut a corset in half to create the first bra. She move to Buenos Aires in the late 19th century and opened a lingerie shop. She had the idea of separting a corset into 2 parts, which used shoulder straps for support and was called a corselet gorge at the Great Exhibition of 1890 in Paris. She was also one of the first people to use rubber thread or elastic, the new materials were used to replace the old whalebones and lacing in corsets. Her bra was updated in 1910 by the American socialite Mary Phelps, who used 2 silk handkerchi­efs tied to a length of ribbon, and it could be worn under an evening dress, she called hers a brassiere.

so actually the updated bra is 100, but the first bra is 121 years old...

[MunyaBuddya]

06:32 PM on 05/26/2010

So it wasn't a man who invented the bra.