Who invented bra sizes

Enter your email address to follow Ephemeral New York and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address:. Thanks to everyone for their support. Blog at WordPress. Ephemeral New York Chronicling an ever-changing city through faded and forgotten artifacts. This is because its first design was simply made from two jockstraps sewn together.

They were tired of being uncomfortable whilst exercising and as you know bouncing boobs hurt! The sporty, leggy look was embraced in the 's with lots of bustiers, softer bras and experimentation with fashion in general. In the 's, the push-up bra skyrocketed into popularity with the Wonderbra finally having it's moment in the spotlight. To this day, there are over 10 different bra styles and even more lingerie styles that each have unique features and uses.

With the first A-D bra size system launching in the 's, women started to get a little confused on what size they should wear. The letters actually only referred to the approximate degree of the bust size, so if you had a very small bust, you would choose an A and so on. The numbers for bra sizes were finally introduced after World War 2, but it did not refer to the actual measurement of the back size, like it does now, it referred to a full bust.

In the 's, bra sizing became more standardised, where the European Common Market put in place new regulations that the 'number' of the bra size would refer to the under bust measurement instead of the full bust measurement. Unfortunately, this new bra system came with a fair bit if criticism.

From here the current way of measuring bra sizes came into play, where the bra size was calculated from the difference between the under bust measurement and the full bust measurement. But once again, women were horrified at this technique, especially if they didn't fit into any existing bra size that was available to them. At first lingerie manufacturers did not change their bra size range to keep up with this change, but instead began telling women to add 4" or 5" to the under bust measurement.

Women ended up buying similar bra sizes to what they had always worn and this was known as 'vanity sizing'. To this day, we still use the 4" and 5" calculation for bra measuring, but there is quite a bit of contradiction on this, as women are acknowledging the wide variety of bra sizes that lingerie manufacturers actually now offer, starting from 28A - 48J. How-to guides How-to determine bra size How-to tell if a bra fits How-to wash a bra How-to bra shop How-to alter a bra How-to choose a bra for problem clothing How-to prolong bra life.

How-to determine bra size How-to tell if a bra fits Bra sizing by country Bra anatomy Sister size Bra pad Bra troubleshooting. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account?

Bra history. Edit source History Talk 0. This section is a stub. You can help Bustyresources Wiki by expanding it. Categories Articles with stub sections Bras Add category. Cancel Save. In classical Greece, women were known to wear a strap of fabric, known as an apodesmos, which resembled a bandeau top and bound the breasts and kept them in place. Corsets were considered mandatory for middle and upper-class women at the time.

They were shaped like funnels and stiffened with stays made of whale bone. Her clever invention allowed her to wear the plunging necklines of the time. War Industries Board asked American women to stop buying corsets in to make more metal available for the war effort.