What was the deal with bullet bras in the 1950s? Why did they become a trend? Were they seen as scandalous or confusing or otherwise cause much backlash or cultural debate? Why did people want it to look like they had 2 traffic cones on their chest?

by Imagine-Paint-Dry

Saw a post on some other subreddit on all, maybe oldschoolcool or thewaywewere idk (edit: /r/oldschoolcool link, about bullet bras. And the comments had a few people asking “but why tho” and the only answers were just vaguely “fashion is weird,” which is fine but I was wondering if there was much of in-depth history of why bras went through a traffic cone phase for a while. What caused the “unrealistic beauty standards” of PS1 Lara Croft boobs to become en vogue in the 1950s?

And like how long did the bullet bra era actually last, and how pervasive was it in the real world? Was everyone walking around like Madonna or was it’s prevalence kind of over represented in popular media and marketing at the time?

mimicofmodes

Oddly enough, I already have an answer to this question! The original has illustrative links sprinkled throughout it, but I've copied the text below: (Edit - links added!)

The answer has a lot to do with the materials and methods of construction used in brassieres in the twentieth century.

During the first decade of the century, the overall focus of the corset was moving lower, with the lower edge covering more of the hips and the top edge doing less and less to support, as the fashionable figure changed from the upright Victorian hourglass to the forward-tilted Edwardian S-bend with its full, low bust. While some women simply went with it, others required something supportive to replace the higher corset, and the brassiere was invented. At this time, the brassiere was a fitted but unboned garment worn on top of the corset (and therefore also on top of the chemise under the corset) that typically went down to the waist, rather than just being for the upper torso. The support it provided was based on the tension of the fabric, which would mainly work to hold the bust in a "natural" position, rather than pushing it up in the way many now think of as the primary purpose of a bra.

Over the course of the 1910s, the bottom half of the garment was abandoned, essentially, bringing it to something we recognize more easily as a brassiere, as in this version. (The use of heavy cotton lace or material covered with eyelet embroidery was very common by the end of the decade.) As you can see in the linked example, the idea of "cups" was simply not present, and the basic flat/gently rounded shape continued to be used into the 1920s. Brassieres of the early 1920s tended to be heavier material intended to compress, while the lightweight bandeaux made out of sheer silk and/or delicate lace date to the end of the decade - it's possible that this represents a shift, with bras coming to be conceived of as something all women would wear, and therefore lighter versions that wouldn't actually do much to support the bust started to be made.

Early in the 1930s, the flattened look left fashion, but the brassiere remained. (So did the corset/girdle, but it was strictly a below-the-bust garment by this time, except when girdle and brassiere were combined into one, as the "corselet".) The bra took on the responsibility of bust definition, which required shaping. A lot of experimentation went on in the interwar period as to construction techniques to achieve this, but the most common method was for each cup to be made out of an upper and a lower piece shaped in convex curves, with a horizontal seam across them, like so. Another common method, though a bit less common, was the use of one or two darts to shape each cup. Both of these methods, particularly if stiffened with quilting to support a larger bust, tend to produce a rather pointed shape - and it has to be said again that the desired shape was still not very "pushed up", with the volume instead pushed (or, perhaps it's more accurate to say allowed to flow) outward. In most cases, the effect was relatively subtle, but then there are the few with more extreme points - typically formed by the use of shaped padding worn on a smaller bust - that get posted all over the internet as normal examples, because the internet loves to take things out of context.

The more structured type of brassiere began to fall out of favor in the 1960s, as the concept of the "natural", unaided figure (unaided except by the proper genes that would give you the shape deemed fashionable) came back in. Rudi Gernreich's "no bra" is often given a certain amount of credit here for capturing the anti-artificiality spirit of the time - as you can see, there's essentially nothing supportive about it, so only a slender and small-chested woman would be able to comfortably wear it. The molded foam cup (now typically used in bra construction) came in in the late 1960s or early 1970s, helping women who couldn't just be "natural" leave behind the brassieres with cups shaped with seaming or darts.