Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 40

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Popular Culture Review

One young debutante was inspired to invent a substitute for traditional restric
tive garments. Mary Phelps Jacob, better known by her pen name of Caresse Crosby,
came out to New York society in the winter of 1913. In her autobiography she
describes the undergarments she wore to her cotillion as
a box-like armor of whalebone and pink cordage...which ran upwards
from the knee to under the armpit. Over the top of it was firmly hooked a
corset-cover of muslin or silk, slightly boned.... If petting had been prac
ticed in those days, it never could have gone very far, for even to gel
one’s own finger beneath the corset-cover took a lot of wriggling. It was
not a determination to ease this virgin state that motivated my invention,
but rather a desire to move and sway and dance in comfort (61).
Midway through “the season” of balls, Crosby determined to remove the un
comfortable corset and replace the “corset cover” with a garment that would sat
isfy moral codes without restricting her movement. The result was the precursor of
the modern brassiere. She spent an afternoon stitching together two silk handker
chiefs with some pink ribbon that, when pulled taut over her chest served to flatten
it “as much as possible so the truth that virgins had breasts should not be sus
pected.” Admired at that evening’s ball because she was “so fresh and supple,” she
reproduced her invention for her friends and later obtained a patent. When her own
marketing efforts failed, she sold her patent to Warner Brothers in 1915. But de
cades passed before anything resembling the light, unstructured garment of Crosby’s
invention became acceptable for general wear.
Why, when a modest alternative to this “armOr of whalebone and pink cord
age” was made available, did any woman wish to remain rigidly confined by an
old-fashioned corset? A series of articles that ran in Harper's Bazaar the year
before Crosby invented the brassiere provide a clue. An editorial entitled “Our
Girls and Dancing” evoked the moral tone of the Progressive era, charging the
upper classes with setting an irreproachable example to the rest of society. Brood
ing over the effect that new dances — like the turkey trot, the bunny hug and the
grizzly bear, as well as the tango (all of which, like the tango, were of AfricanAmerican origin) — were likely to have on the younger generation, the editor
noted primly that “girls in the tenements and the dance halls” follow the example
of “girls in society.” This was an obv