Ouch! Is it over for the underwired bra?

It's spring 2022. Being late for school pickup is stressful at the best of times, let alone when you're not wearing a bra. I knew I could do it if I ran, but as a petite I wear a D cup, so jogging along a major road in mid-afternoon involved sticking my forearms on my chest like a T rex like it was somehow less ridiculous than squeezing my boobs. Everyone is watching me, I thought. Everyone looks at me and they know I'm not wearing a bra.
Of course no one noticed or cared if I wore one, but I kept walking with my arms folded against my chest. Lockdown may have been lifted for a long time, but my lockdown habits — which started with giving up smart clothes, then pantyhose, and finally, inevitably, underwired bras — persist.
Back in the spring of 2020, with nowhere to go, I welcomed it. I can't think of a single bra-wearing person who isn't familiar with the stab of an underwire gone rogue, having slipped the bounds of its fabric. Or that urgent exhalation that comes from unhooking a bra at the end of the day. Before the pandemic, on the rare nights I forgot to take my bra off, I was reminded of its presence via a throbbing pain in my ribs, my body's Morse code alerting that the bra had overstayed its welcome. But in recent years, the closest thing to a real bra has been a sports bra. Is it any wonder that their sales rose so sharply that they were added to the ONS inflation measure? We may have gone back to work, but the idea of going back to our underwire seems to be going too far.
For proof - if it were needed - halfway through the pandemic, in October 2020, lingerie retailer Bravissimo reported a drop of 30 % of his income. Data from global market research group NPD also confirmed that sales of women's clothing in general were down in 2020 from April to June, with sales of bras alone registering a 16% drop. “Fashion doesn't exist in a bubble; it looks at how people live, what they consume,” says Lauretta Roberts, co-founder of fashion news site theindustry.fashion. "People's lifestyles are changing and fashion has to adapt to that."

Lifestyle Jul 4, 2022 0 103 Add to Reading List

Ouch! Is it over for the underwired bra?

It's spring 2022. Being late for school pickup is stressful at the best of times, let alone when you're not wearing a bra. I knew I could do it if I ran, but as a petite I wear a D cup, so jogging along a major road in mid-afternoon involved sticking my forearms on my chest like a T rex like it was somehow less ridiculous than squeezing my boobs. Everyone is watching me, I thought. Everyone looks at me and they know I'm not wearing a bra.

Of course no one noticed or cared if I wore one, but I kept walking with my arms folded against my chest. Lockdown may have been lifted for a long time, but my lockdown habits — which started with giving up smart clothes, then pantyhose, and finally, inevitably, underwired bras — persist.

Back in the spring of 2020, with nowhere to go, I welcomed it. I can't think of a single bra-wearing person who isn't familiar with the stab of an underwire gone rogue, having slipped the bounds of its fabric. Or that urgent exhalation that comes from unhooking a bra at the end of the day. Before the pandemic, on the rare nights I forgot to take my bra off, I was reminded of its presence via a throbbing pain in my ribs, my body's Morse code alerting that the bra had overstayed its welcome. But in recent years, the closest thing to a real bra has been a sports bra. Is it any wonder that their sales rose so sharply that they were added to the ONS inflation measure? We may have gone back to work, but the idea of going back to our underwire seems to be going too far.

For proof - if it were needed - halfway through the pandemic, in October 2020, lingerie retailer Bravissimo reported a drop of 30 % of his income. Data from global market research group NPD also confirmed that sales of women's clothing in general were down in 2020 from April to June, with sales of bras alone registering a 16% drop. “Fashion doesn't exist in a bubble; it looks at how people live, what they consume,” says Lauretta Roberts, co-founder of fashion news site theindustry.fashion. "People's lifestyles are changing and fashion has to adapt to that."