~Bullet Bra Magic~
!yes indeed, it was kinda magic!
And it is so deserving of its very own chapter in the ‘Luxury Lingerie Roots’- blog for sure.
Unlike predecessors in the luxury lingerie world with some type of underwiring for support, we now find the creation of cones to give our chest lift and quite the pointiness!
We’re talking about the infamous Bullet-bra!
~Comfortable Supportive Cones~
The first bullet bra was actually released in 1941 under the Perma-Lift brand.
It promised comfort and support.
There were no underwires to achieve this promise, but swirls of fabric and some incredibly awesome stitchwork to create and keep the cone shape.
Women were intrigued for sure!
~Bullet Bra is a Petname~
In wartime, WWII, pet names for the Perma-Lift bra came to be and these names are the ones that stuck around!
When thinking of wartime, and take details of this era to the luxury lingerie world, we can come up with resemble wartime-paraphernalia like bullets and torpedoes.
Hence the very popular names Bullet Bra or Torpedo Bra of which the Bullet Bra was the all-time favorite.
The influence in naming things with a wartime innuendo extended even to the new curly swirly hairstyle of that decade and this hairstyle would be called Victory rolls!
~The Glamor at the Luxury Lingerie front~
Why were women now so enamored with this latest development in the luxury lingerie industry?
It’s all because of the Glamor on the big Silver Screen; the movies were women would flock to for some wartime-solace.
And well, if the likes of beautiful actresses and Pin-Up models wore the bullet bra, then women of that era of course wanted to copy that look to a fabulous T!
~Sweater Girls~
Slowly but surely the most wanted combo was to wear a Bullet bra underneath a very tight sweater, emphasizing those pointy-looking boobs even more.
Actually, this tight sweater “movement” started with the actress Lana Turner in the late ’30s already, but back then she didn’t wear the now infamous bullet bra yet though!
But Lana Turner was that glamorous original “Sweater Girl”.
So the tight sweaters became all the rage during the ’40s but then, when the Bullet bra hit the luxury lingerie markets, the most sought-after look was that bullet bra underneath that tight sweater.
~The Bigger The Better~
Those bullet bras celebrated huge popularity and gained more terrain all the way up and well into the ’60s.
And the cones of the bra became bigger and bigger in the ’50s too!
But how did women manage to keep the shape of the now very exaggerated cones of their bullet bra upright, even when they didn’t manage to fill the cone-space by their own boobies?
To keep the Bullet bra from looking deflated the cones would be filled up with padding (or falsies)!
~Cones of the future~
Yes, there are manufacturers of the Bullet bra nowadays, but we don’t see them an awful lot in the design of luxury lingerie.
You will find the occasional revivals though and seeing that the vintage fashion industry being popular now, the retro luxury lingerie -look is also gaining ground!
And just look at Madonna, when she included the ultra-exaggerated bullet bra, designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, in her ‘Blonde Ambition’- tour of 1990 and gave it the well-deserved stage!
The Bullet-bra is an icon with its conical shape and quite the legend!
~*~
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