Over the last few months the TRC Leiden has been given various garments by Sonja Meijer-Beckman in Leiderdorp. The garments belonged to her grandmother, her mother and her aunt, who had a long and complex history in Slovenia, northern Italy, the Netherlands, a Nazi concentration camp in Poland and refugee centres in Southeast Asia.
Some of the stories behind the donated garments are intriguing, others are thought provoking, while various items are indicative of their times. Over the next few weeks we hope to publish a series of blogs based on the Meijer-Beckman donation.
In this blog we want to touch upon a subject I have some experience of, but it is not a topic I thought I would ever write about, namely 20th century bras.
There are three very different types of bras among the Meijer-Beckman donation and they make an interesting snapshot of the development of women’s underwear, their shapes, women's changing social position and indeed gender politics over the last 100 years.
By the end of the 19th century, garments to support women’s breasts came in the form of various types of corsets, but these had gone out of fashion by the 1920’s, when working women and dedicated followers of fashion abandoned tight lacing to acquire the desired figure, posture and silhouette of the time.
Bandeau bra, 1920's, Italy (2021.0482).The earliest types of bra in the Meijer-Beckman gift consist of two bandeaus from the 1920’s. They are both made of a long rectangular piece of material with two shoulder straps. One of them (TRC 2021.0135) is made from a black cotton material and fastened with metal hooks and eyes. The second bandeau (TRC 2021.0482) is of white cotton and fastened with several, small glass buttons. It is slightly different from the first version as there is some styling using pin-tucks and a little pleating.
Wedding dress crom Italy, 1926 (TRC 2020.3882a).The bandeau provides virtually no support or shape whatsoever, but this type was popular in order to create the straight, boyish silhouette that was fashionable in the 1920's. Bandeaus were worn underneath a dress that was wide, had a straight silhouette (not fitted to shape) anda very low waistline. We have several examples of this type of dress in the TRC Collection, including an Italian wedding dress from 1926, which would have been worn with a bandeau (TRC 2020.3882a). For this wedding dress, see also the TRC blog of 3 October 2020).
A beach bra of the 1930's, Italy/Slovenia (2021.0415a).The second bra type in the Meijer-Beckman donation reflects another change in women’s lives and fashion, namely the creation of swimwear, which made it easy to swim and move around (unlike some of the costumes worn in the late 19th century that were heavy, all-covering and often made of wool!).
The 'new' beach and sportswear was made up of a shaped and supportive, bodice-like bra and a pair of shorts (basically it’s a form of ‘respectable’ bikini). The example given by Sonja Beckman dates to the 1930’s and came from Italy. It was probably worn by her mother (TRC 2021.0415a).
Crochet bra from the Netherlands, 1960's (TRC 2021.0136).The third type of bra dates to the 1960’s and again would have been used in a bikini set. There are three examples in the donation and all are minimalistic and indeed, to my feeling (literally while cataloguing them), uncomfortable to wear, as they are hand crocheted in thickish, synthetic yarns in white (TRC 2021.0136), pink (TRC 2021.0137) and red (TRC 2021.0138) respectively.
Shortly afterwards, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, came various politically inspired movements, including ‘ban the bra’, with the burning of bras (an urban myth?), and more recently, up-lifters, maximisers, minimisers, modesty and mini-forms of bras.
By the end of the 20th century bras had become very big (commercial) business, a far cry from the 1920’s bandeaus described above!
Gillian Vogelsang, 23 February 2021
