The Brassière Patent: Mary Phelps Jacob in New York
Poets involved
What happened
On November 3, 1914, New York socialite and poet Mary Phelps Jacob (later known as Caresse Crosby) received US Patent No. 1,115,674 for a backless brassière made from two handkerchiefs and pink ribbon — a garment fundamentally different from the corset in that it supported rather than compressed the body. Jacob sold her patent to the Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for $1,500 — a purchase that would eventually earn the company an estimated $15 million. The brassière's invention marks a decisive moment in the history of women's intimate clothing and bodily autonomy.
Literary impact
Mary Phelps Jacob was not only an inventor but a published poet and, as Caresse Crosby, co-founder with her husband Harry Crosby of the Black Sun Press in Paris, which published early works by Hart Crane, D.H. Lawrence, and Archibald MacLeish. Her dual identity as bodily liberator and literary patron makes her a uniquely important figure connecting dress reform to the modernist literary world. Her memoir The Passionate Years (1953) describes the interconnections of her bodily, social, and literary experiments.
Source: Wikipedia
