As women in the early 1900s participated in more sports and vigorous dancing, they began to throw out their corsets in favor of more comfortable brassieres. In 1913, Mary Phelps Jacob, later known as Caresse Crosby, felt the corset was too restrictive for dancing in the nightclubs and claimed she invented the bra by tying two handkerchiefs together with ribbons. In contrast to the Victorian whalebone bodices and corsests, Jacob’s brassiere was soft, short, and gave a clear, natural separation between the breasts. She later sold the patent to Warner Brothers. The tango craze in 1915--as well as World War I and, to a lesser and indirect extent, the woman’s movement--encouraged the demise of the corset. The farewell to tighter garments, however, was short lived as woman turned to the girdle to achieve the long, lean, and androgynous clapper look of the 1920s.

After the war, however, and during the Great Depression, bosoms returned. The “bra,” a shortened from of “brassiere,” changed from flattening breasts in the 1920s to accentuating them. In 1935, Warner Brothers introduced cup sizes, which acknowledged that women come in all shapes and sizes. The “alphabet bra” consisted of four cup sizes: A, B, C, and D. Double-D came along later and Double-A later still (Ewing 1976). During World War II, materials used to make undergarments, such as steel and rubber, were in short supply, so manufactures turned to synthetic materials which would eventually lead to Lycra, rayon, and Lastex.