Atomic Age lingerie!

[modernwizard]

Do you know how hard it is to find a digital version of one of those pointy bras from the middle of the last century? I thought I wouldn't have any trouble, as this style appears popular with people who do "pinup," "vintage" or "retro" renders. Using these terms, along with "bra" and "lingerie," brought me nothing but a lot of girdles and garter belts. Hooray for girdles and garter belts [great band name!], but they're not what I was looking for.

Further poking around ["1940s lingerie Daz Studio," "1950s lingerie Daz Studio"] revealed that the magical search term was "bullet bra." Using the magic phrase, I came up with outoftouch's X14 Revenge for V4, which will do nicely for my purposes.

I have to wonder about the term "bullet bra," though. Is that really what people called it back then? I mean, I always thought they looked more like rocket cones. Either way, I find it fascinating how the aerodynamic, long and curvy look gained popularity not only in vehicular style, architecture and furniture, but also in clothing. Perhaps World War II and the ensuing arms race gave people weapons on the brain, affecting their sense of style so that, slowly and subtly, everything started to look like bullets, bombs, missiles, rockets and satellites. From today's perspective, we think look up the aesthetic as a set of cool design elements, but it arguably represents a generation's deep-seated and thoroughly legitimate fear that they were going to do themselves in with their own technology.

Comments

[dollsahoy]

A bit of poking 'round online says they were originally called Chansonette bras by Maidenform, and that their design may have been inspired by WWII materials rationing (no underwire = more metal for tanks) and that, yeah, the weaponizing of culture during the war led to the weaponizing of the bra style's common name...and rockets weren't really a big part of pop culture that early (Space Race was a Cold War Thing, after all..)

[modernwizard]

Then the rockets come more from my own associations than actual historical reality, but the general musing about the weaponized aesthetic still stands. :D