From breast band to sports bra

A floor mosaic in the Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily, shows young women exercising in a breastband the Romans called a strophium, worn with a loincloth called a subligaculum.

Excavations at Lengberg Castle, East Tyrol, from 2008 found four linen garments with distinct cups, some trimmed with needle lace. Radiocarbon dating confirmed they are fifteenth century.

Stays of the 1780s give a smooth, firm cone-shaped torso rather than emphasising the bust; their whalebone softens with body heat and moulds to the wearer.

A short-sleeved cotton bodice of about 1820 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is catalogued as a “brassiere” — a reminder that shaped bust supports existed long before the word.

As the bustle replaces the crinoline, corsets grow much longer and more rigid, often with a steel busk at the front and brass eyelets at the back.

Magazine advertisements offer bust supports worn from the shoulders, such as the “Grecian Bust Girdle”, sold as an alternative or companion to the corset.

US patent 1,115,674 for a soft “Brassiere” is granted on 3 November 1914: two bias-cut pieces of cloth with ties and tape, designed to suit gowns cut low at the back.

Rosamond Klin’s London-designed Kestos, patented in 1926, has two lightly darted triangle cups — arguably one of the first commercially made bras with separate cups.

Formfit offers small, average and full cups in 1932; S. H. Camp relates cups to the letters A–D; Warner’s lettered cups are dated to 1935 or 1937. Who was first is disputed.

DuPont introduces nylon. Nylon bras are on sale in 1941 and 1942, then withdrawn to conserve the fibre for the war effort.

Clothes are rationed in Britain from 1 June 1941 until 1949. Utility garments carry the CC41 mark; elastic is in very short supply.

Dior’s “Corolle” line brings back curves. Underwiring and boned longline styles become more common, and padding increases in the 1950s.

Maidenform launches its “I Dreamed” advertising campaign. It runs for twenty years.

Spiral-stitched cups give the pointed silhouette; at the end of the decade “pre-formed” moulded cups arrive.

DuPont announces Lycra. By the 1960s most bras combine nylon and Lycra, with stretch straps and wings.

Lisa Lindahl and Polly Palmer Smith sew two jockstraps together; with Hinda Schreiber they launch the Jogbra. The “athletic brassiere” patent is issued in 1979.

UK studies involving University of Portsmouth researchers find bra-fit problems common among marathon runners, and that breasts affect many schoolgirls’ participation in sport.