Ouch! Is it all over for the underwired bra?
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Loading... - Marija Vukovic
- 03 Jun 2022
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It’s spring 2022. Running late for the school pickup is stressful at the best of times, let alone when you’re not wearing a bra. I knew I could make it if I ran, but while I’m petite, I wear a D cup, so jogging along a main road mid-afternoon involved pinning my forearms to my chest like a T rex as if this was somehow less ridiculous than clutching my boobs. Everyone is looking at me, I thought. Everyone is looking at me and they know I’m not wearing a bra.
Of course nobody noticed or cared whether I was wearing one, yet I continued to walk with my arms folded against my chest. Lockdown may have long lifted but my lockdown habits – which began with forgoing smart clothes, then tights and eventually, inevitably, underwired bras – persist.
Back in spring 2020, with nowhere to go, I welcomed it. I can’t think of a single bra-wearing person who isn’t familiar with the stab of an underwire gone rogue, having slipped the confines of its fabric. Or that urgent exhale that comes from unhooking a bra at the end of the day. Pre-pandemic, on rare evenings when I would forget to remove my bra, I’d be reminded of its presence via a throbbing ache on my ribs, my body’s morse code alert that the bra had overstayed its welcome. But in the past few years, the closest I got to an actual bra was a sports one. Is it any wonder that sales of them have risen so steeply that they’ve been added to the ONS’s measure of inflation? We may have returned to work, but the idea of returning to our underwireds feels like a step too far.
For proof – if proof were needed – halfway through the pandemic, in October 2020, lingerie retailer Bravissimo reported a 30% drop in revenue. Data from global market research group NPD also confirmed that sales in women’s apparel in general were down in 2020 from April through to June, with bra sales alone seeing a 16% decrease. “Fashion doesn’t exist in a bubble; it looks at how people are living, what they’re consuming,” says Lauretta Roberts, co-founder of fashion news site theindustry.fashion. “People’s lifestyles change and fashion has to respond to that.”
Of course, bras remain sacred to some women. Take Annette Whymark, 58, who works in film: she tells me she has never gone braless. “I’m not someone who could ever wear a top without one; I would feel too exposed.” But there are other women like me. Ashleigh Cunningham, 26, an art department assistant, size 32C, stopped wearing a bra over lockdown simply because she could: “I didn’t feel the need to be what society considers as presentable.” Like mine, Ashleigh’s shifting habits have bedded in: “Once everyone started going back to work again, I didn’t want to wear a bra. So I wore little crop tops instead of a full underwire. I just find it more comfortable.”
Some companies on the high street, such as M&S and Cos, have responded by introducing bras that are neither traditional or sporty, just comfy. They tend to sit alongside pyjamas and loungewear, and come in unusual fabrics such as cashmere mix. They’re also sturdy enough to be worn alone (should you feel able). Other companies removed traditional bras altogether. Underwear brand Parade, for example, doesn’t feature a single underwired bra. The firm’s founder, Cami Téllez, started the company in response to shifting perceptions. “We know there are people who are still wearing underwire because they feel it has more support, or provides structure to a particular outfit, or because they feel their best wearing one,” she tells me. “So, it’s less about the death of the underwire, and more about offering an alternative.”
Now, at 38, I’ve found my happy medium in bralettes – bras in spirit, just without the wires and the padding. I had always seen them as a young girl’s garment, made of flimsy fabric and lacking any supporting structure. Times have changed though, and I was pleasantly surprised to see thicker fabrics and adequate structuring.
The ones I ordered online come in small, medium or large – no cup sizes – distancing them even further from “proper” underwear. What arrived was black velour, lace trim, plunging v-neck. A thick strap around the back and spaghetti straps on the shoulders, with more support than I expected. Read More...
