For anything and everything you ever or never wanted to know about bras and knickers - Rosemary Hawthorne has two excellent books on those two subjects. 'Bras, a private view' was published in the UK in 1992 by Souvenir Press, ISBN 0-285-63086-5.

Corsets weren't developed to support the breasts, but to constrain them, stiffen the body and slim the waist. What we know as a corset today would be unrecognisable to our mediaeval grandmothers, who wore a sort of 'body' made of stiff linen. Our Tudor grandmothers might see a faint familiarity in the modern garments beloved by bondage fans, the long, strictly confined 'stomacher' restricting movement; but it's not until the 17th and 18th centuries that breasts came up for air as it were... When Charles I's wife Henrietta Maria came over from France, she brought with her the less restricted, rounder shape that was popular in the French Court. Necklines were rounded rather than straight, bodies more shaped, with definable hips and the long pointed 'stomacher' shortened to a rounded edge. Breasts were still squashed in under 'stays' as the corset was now called, but they were just visible.

As for the first recognisable bra - that came about in 1914 with the aid of two hankies, some pink ribbon and the French maid of Mary Jacobs, a New York debutante who hated the heavy boned corsets of the early 20th Century.

LTS