The Bra That Wasn’t There
They called him an “enemy of the church,” a menace and, my personal favorite, “the Bolivar of the Bosom,” a reference to the 19th-century general who helped lead Spain to independence. But Los Angeles–based designer Rudi Gernreich didn’t have a fixation on breasts, as many critics angrily contended. Nope, Gernreich was quite happily gay, for one thing, and his appreciation for nudity transcended gender and singular body parts. He insisted his interest was not in exploiting women’s bodies, but in freeing them from binding, structured garments. He aimed to create clothing that followed the tides of fashion, though most of his designs—the topless bathing suit, the thong, the see-through blouse and psychedelic color combinations—were more innovative than consequential. Which is how on this day in 1964, Gernreich came to launch the No-Bra Bra, a featherweight pairing of two bias-cut triangles of sheer nylon net molded with only a single small dart. The elasticized shoulder straps, wrote fashion doyenne Eugenia Sheppard, “are as narrow as strings…and invisible as nothing.”
Light and invisible as it may have been, from Gernreich’s perspective, the bra wasn’t small enough. “I kept trying to make it briefer,” he said, “but there’s still too much going on.”
Designer Rudi Gernreich (right) in his studio.
Lingerie company Exquisite Form, the producer of the No-Bra Bra, had hounded Gernreich for designs for a briefer bra since he had launched the topless bathing suit four months earlier. The bra came in three transparent shades, powder puff (nude), black and white, and was made no larger than a 34B. The idea was to give smaller breasted women an undergarment that held the girls relatively in place while celebrating their shape and form, rather than masking them in padding or elevating them with underwire. The No-Bra Bra also flattered the lighter and looser styles of the era. At the time, the bras available to women were throwbacks to 1950s bullet bras, and the bulky structure and all-over embroidery disrupted the fun designs of 1964: The Ye-Ye poor boy, cut-out shifts and clingy eveningwear. As one buyer put it, “women look like women again, instead of Sherman tanks.” Unlike the topless bathing suit, the No-Bra Bra was a best seller from the start, inspiring the designer to introduce three more bra designs the following spring: The no-sides bra (to accommodate dresses with deep armholes), the no-front bra (to flatter bodices with slit-to-the-waist necklines) and the no-back bra (anchored around the waist instead of the rib cage). “It’s the biggest thing in the industry since stretch straps,” boasted Exquisite Form vice president Irwin Roseman. “Women have been dying, just dying for something soft and natural instead of the old uplift.”
One thing was clear, Gernreich was consistently prescient about the future of fashion. He made no secret about his preference for women wearing no bra or underwear at all, and sure enough, by the 1970s many women were letting their breasts swing unencumbered. As with his scandalous topless bathing suit, which ushered in an era of topless beaches, the No-Bra Bra encouraged women to let their figures speak for themselves. Gernreich conceded that the topless bathing suit was a lark but explained, “The topless, by overstating and exaggerating a new freedom of the body, will make the moderate, right degree of freedom more acceptable.” As the success of the No-Bra Bra proved, once again he was right on. —Ali Basye
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