Tag Archives: vintage lingerie

Recently, the Miss Teen USA pageant has been in the news for removing the swimsuit segment of its competition. This makes sense – seeing as the pageant is put on in order to award scholarship money to prospective students, and is for girls aged 14-19!

The swimsuit round of beauty pageants has been an intrinsic element of each event since their inception almost one hundred years ago in 1921, when the first Miss America pageant was held and advertised as a ‘bathers revue.’

The Miss America contest has always been upheld as a celebration of female empowerment and sisterhood, which seems baffling today when women are more likely to feel empowered by education and progressive values than what they look like in a garter belt. During the 1950’s however, pageants and the “Miss…” title were used to advertise products and concepts from National Hot Dog Week to the atomic bomb.

Atomic bomb, you might exclaim! I promise I’m not making this up. Nevada was keen to emphasise its modernity and advances in the nuclear arena during the 1950’s, and so Miss Atomic Bomb was born – combining two of the state’s calling cards – nuclear bombs and showgirls - because what doesn’t say “take a trip to Vegas” like atomic warfare and scantily clad females?!

There were countless seemingly bizarre efforts to cash in on the ‘sex sells’ bonanza; such as the 1954 Miss Magic Marker pageant, 1968’s celebration of librarians – Miss Archive, 1935’s illustrious Miss Idaho Potato, the West Side Fur Company’s 1960 Mink Queen contest and Miss National Catfish Queen of 1954.

All of these pageants had the same basic attributes in common – young female hopefuls, some thinly disguised product placement, and a heavy focus on strutting the stage in little more than underwear.

Zion Meat Company’s infamous Sausage Queen pageant in 1955 was held to celebrate National Hot Dog Week. Geene Courtney won the contest, and had the honour of being strung with raw sausages arranged artfully around her girdle. In a similar vein was the 1952 Frankfurter Queen – sponsored by the Hebrew National!

Occasionally pageants aimed to further an idea or promote a concept, as opposed to simply marketing sausages or fur pelts. Miss Psywar was one such pageant. Psywar, or psychological warfare, was not a new concept. The wartime efforts of the 1940’s needed not only covert psy-ops in order to beleaguer enemies, but also some good old fashioned morale boosting for the folks at home. So, the Miss Psywar pageant was born. Not much is known about it, besides the fact that it took place in Washington state in the 1940’s, and the little that can be gleaned from the surviving photographs – showing young women in in bullet bra style swimsuits, standing around horn loudspeakers!

And it wasn’t just the shady world of psychological warfare that had its own beauty contest – the NSA even had a pageant which ran in the 1950’s and early 1960’s – perhaps the National Security Agency is not all about brains, as evidenced in this photo below, showing smiling women in corseted dresses! Again, very little is known about this pageant – besides the fact that contestants represented numbers as opposed to states – and that it was held annually. It seems the NSA is not keen to share many more details of its dark beauty queen history!

And for our final foray into the world of downright strange beauty pageants of the past, I’ll leave you with this photograph of a young girl posing in knickers with a bag on her head – which at first glance looks rather questionable -  but is actually a shot from the 1930’s Miss Lovely Eyes pageant!

In the late 1980’s, Bettie Page was nearing seventy and living in a group home just outside Los Angeles. Sitting around the TV with her fellow septuagenarian residents, she suddenly saw her younger self on the screen, in the midst of being featured on Entertainment Tonight.

For anyone with even a mild interest in 1950’s Hollywood, alternative retro culture or pin ups of yesteryear, Bettie Page is a household name. For Bettie herself however, her ongoing infamy was a total revelation.

Bettie Page is the antithesis of most 1950’s glamour icons. Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Kim Novak, Sophia Loren and others tapped into their sexuality to create a brand image for themselves, but no one was quite so forthright about it as Bettie.

Full frontal nudity was considered taboo in the post WWII 50’s, yet Bettie was a proponent of embracing sexuality and your body – treating both as something to be celebrated as opposed to something to hide away or repress. She is perhaps best known for her fetish and bondage inspired photo shoots, considered scandalous at the time, but the kind of imagery we see in anything from music videos to advertising billboards these days.

Bettie Mae Page was born in 1923 in Nashville, Tennessee. She married her first husband when she was 20, and they moved to San Francisco together. They divorced four years later, and Bettie moved to New York, determined to become an actress. Pin up modelling was something to bring in some cash, as it was for Monroe and many more before and after Bettie. She was discovered by a policeman called Jerry Tibbs, who was a photographer on the side, and was also the one that told her that her forehead was too high, and encouraged her to have bangs (a fringe to the English) cut in, to hide it. Her bangs formed part of her trademark look, a look which is still emulated today.

Bettie appeared in one of the first pin up calendars, posed for iconic photographers such as Irving Klaw and Bunny Yeager, and was one of the first Playboy centerfolds – Miss January 1955. She made most of the lingerie and costumes for her shoots herself, including now-famed outfits such as the leopard pattern ‘jungle girl’ costume immortalised in Yeager’s 1954 Jungle Bettie shoot, at the Africa USA park in Florida.

She was well known for the innovative and eye catching costumes that she designed for herself – anything from bullet bras to garter belts.

Bettie is often associated with S&M poses, but by her own admission, Irving Klaw’s work is the only example of any fetishist photography. She often posed nude, but never in sexually explicit content. Despite this, Bettie was implicated during the Kefauver hearings, set up by Senator Estes Kefauver that targeted indecent publications and pornography.

In 1959, Bettie disappeared from the limelight altogether. Her departure from modelling was so sudden that it led many to believe that she was dead. Even researching her now, with the entirety of the Internet at your fingertips, it is a hard slog to find definitive facts, dates and corroborations. Even Dita von Teese is quoted as saying, “Now you know everything about a celebrity, but Bettie, you know nothing about.” She is truly enigmatic.

We do know that in 1959, she converted to born again Christianity. She was determined to become a missionary in Africa, but the fact that she had been divorced twice meant that she was rejected. There is no record as to whether the church decided that the fact that she had posed naked with bullwhips was also a deciding factor!

She married again for a third time, but this marriage also disintegrated and ended in divorce. It was around this time that Bettie reported hearing voices. She reportedly stabbed her landlady 20 times, explaining that “God made her do it.” According to other reports, this was not the first time that she had stabbed someone. After stabbing her landlady, she was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia and spent 20 months in Patton State Hospital in California. After her release, she was arrested for assault after attacking another landlord, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She spent eight years living in a group home under state supervision, which was where she saw herself on television on Entertainment Tonight.

Bettie’s iconic status and unsurpassed career were marred by the fact that she was rarely rewarded for her hard work. She recalls once going to a photo shoot where the photographer encouraged her to bring all of the bikinis, costumes and lingerie she had made. He shot her in them and then used the photos to replicate the designs, selling them as Bettie Page Bikinis. He never offered her a cent, and remarkably, she never sued him. After she left modelling, she was penniless, and this continued until she was rediscovered in the 1990’s.

Incidentally, it was Hugh Hefner who realised at a dinner at the Playboy Mansion in 1993, to which she had been invited, that she wasn’t being represented by an agent and had no control over the rights to her image or brand. He organised representation for her, and saw that she received royalties.

Mark Mori, an esteemed documentary maker living in LA, began interviewing her in the late 1990’s. He kept the tapes for a few years, before eventually making a documentary in 2007, a year before Bettie’s death of a heart attack.

He says of her everlasting appeal as an icon for women to this day, "It has to do with not fitting into the dominant culture idea of what's good or sexy. I'm not a supermodel. I'm not Barbie. Whatever ideal it is that they are supposed to fit into. Whatever it is about Bettie, Bettie is the one they latch onto that allows them to feel comfortable in their own sexuality."

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For as long as I can remember the fashion for bras has been focused around a full and rounded shape with plenty of uplift. Underwiring, padding and keeping your breasts hoisted high has been the order of the day since I got my first training bra. In the 1970s (and earlier) a pointier silhouette was favoured, rather than strapping their breasts up to their sternum women would favour a bra that placed them at the top of the ribcage. It's only us retro and vintage aficionados who have always known the appeal of a pointier cup, in our beloved bullet bras and vintage lingerie. However, things are set to change. A pointier breast is soon to become widely spread, and is already rather in vogue. In fact, anyone with any style know-how has already ditched the full padded rounded bras that we should have left in the 90s and is falling firmly in love with balconettes, bullet bras and bralettes. In fact, anything with minimal padding is the coveted look.

From the brand new Court Royal range at True Corset. The Marlene Bullet Bra and Coco Garter, both in black.

A touch of youth

It is argued that young women have long favoured a more rounded cup as it adds a touch of maturity, while older women feel they are losing a little uplift and fullness and so also tend to opt for something with padding and a bit of lift. However, when you think about it, younger breasts tend to be more conical. A well-padded rounded bosom can often look a little matronly! Opting for a more natural look or even enhancing the conical aspect, could give a much more youthful and beguiling effect.

A pointier breast shape looks more youthful

Enter the bullet bra

Women who love corsetry, burlesque and the seduction associated with lingerie are rarely drawn to overtly natural styles. However, the natural conical shape of the breast when exaggerated and enhanced with a little theatre is the concept behind the bullet bra. This 1950s style offers a great silhouette and is dripping in sex appeal, whether worn as bedroom apparel or underneath your clothes. To make the most of the slinky silhouette you might like to wear your bullet bra with a waist cincher to really emphasize your curves. For steamy nights in then a seductive matching garter belt is a hot choice.

The brand new True Corset Rosa Garter Belt in black from the Court Royal collection

A more sensual shape

There is a softness to a rounded cup that is almost apologetic. The pointed shape has a haughty tilt to it, unapologetically feminine and with a coquettish focus on the nipple. With the whole 'free the nipple' movement and a strong message across the board that it is the female nipple that exudes sexuality rather than the breast itself, it makes sense to pull the attention down to the peak of the breast if you are looking to enhance your sensuality.

Audrey Tautou is the ultimate French beauty with an appealing and natural silhouette

Doing it French style

In France, women never lost sight of the appeal of a pointier breast and have long worn their bras with a more natural and conical shape. French women are vigilant about avoiding back fat, so keep their back straps loose and often opt for bras without padding. French bras will tend to have wider back straps to avoid the issue of potential back fat bulges, very much in the style of a bullet bra. Many French women will even omit a bra altogether.

The Marilyn Bullet Bra in black from True Corset

The appeal of a bullet bra

Vintage lovers will only need to catch a glimpse of a sexy satin bullet bra before they start thinking about the iconic curves of Marilyn Monroe. Her voluptuous curves were unforgettable, yet the shape of the breasts was certainly more conical than round. The bullet bra doesn't just create an enviable silhouette that whispers of vintage sophistication and a deep-rooted sensuality. The bullet bra is also immensely comfortable as it provides a great deal of support, it covers the whole breast which means there are no unsightly bulges creeping over the top of the cup, the wide back strap eliminates any hint of back fat and the meticulous design and structure means your posture is immediately improved, no-one can slouch in a bullet bra they are far too uplifting for that!

To really show off your new pointy breast shape then slip a clingy sweater over the top and make like Marilyn.

Marilyn is the perfect example of the appeal of a more conical bra shape

As the trend for a more conical and natural breast shape grows, we want to lead the way with a far more dramatic, theatrical and show stopping interpretation. Vintage lovers don't follow fashion fads, we lead the way and when it comes to bullet bras it's the breasts that are at the front of the game.