At the age of 16, my parents decided to give me a clothing allowance, the objective of which was to teach me how to handle money. The only items from which I was exempt from financial responsibility were my winter coat and my bras. The reason for this, the obvious cost of a winter coat skewing the budget and for me, lushly endowed the need to purchase rather well built and costly foundations. My mother’s clothing taste leaned more towards her Midwestern roots, preferring the conservative understatement of tweeds and cable knit sweaters. However, I as a teenager in the mid 1960’s was focused on fashion trends; my tastes were colored by an era dominated by Twiggy, Courrѐges, bold statements and flower power. Much to her chagrin, my first purchase with my newly acquired riches, was a lime green polyester shift dress rising way above my knees replete with the obligatory white stripe down the front. Paired with floral patterned tights, I was in teenage heaven. But, beneath this adolescent expression of mod solidarity was a bra purchased from a corsetiѐre at Saks because despite the fact that I wore a size 8 dress, there were no bras on the market in those days that addressed the aesthetic of a voluptuous young fashion warrior. I was jealous of my girlfriends, all of whom had the pleasure of wearing feminine and fun underpinnings. I always felt imprisoned in an erector set of wires and elastic, but my mother was firm in her belief that control and support came first.
