Moonbeam is sprawled across the bra bar, staring straight into the camera, his face in extreme close up. His extraordinarily blue eyes fill the photo, their color and shape enhanced by the natural brown “liner” that rims them. His ears are alert, attentive as he watches the photographer cajole him to give us a smile. I remember falling into those liquid blue pools, totally smitten from the first time I laid my own baby blues on him.
When we started our business, our shop was situated above a meat market, produce market and pizza shop, so we wanted to get a resident exterminator, and give a home to an animal in need. My vet put us in touch with CAP – Companion Animal Placement services – who put us in touch with one of their foster parents for stray cats. I made an appointment to meet Moonbeam, who according to Maryanne, the foster momcat, was a “special boy” in need of a special home.
Maryann explained that Moonbeam had a long history with CAP, first making their acquaintance when he was just a kitten. He had somehow managed to scamper onto a window ledge of an apartment building, 6 stories up, and was trapped. A woman in an opposite section of the building, who happened to be looking out her window at the brilliant full moon, spotted him, miraculously, because that moon was shining right into his blue eyes. The rescuer named him Moonbeam, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Moonbeam was easily adoptable as an adorable kitten, and was placed in a home from which he promptly escaped. Because he had been “processed” by CAP, he was now part of the “system” and would be searched for, and rescued again. Each time he ran away, the volunteers of CAP took to the streets, going from block to block, searching under cars and up trees, calling “Moonbeam, c’mon boy come to us, Moooon –eeeee.” Smart fella that he was, he responded to their calls, using up several of his 9 lives this way. He ran away from several more homes, and as a 3 year old with “behavior problems” was not so easily adoptable anymore.
Maryanne was a fabulous foster mom, and operated a spiritual resource network from her gigantic loft in the flat iron district, which at that time housed more than 15 cats in need of homes. She hired an animal communicator, long before anyone ever heard of the dog whisperer, to find out why Moonbeam kept running away, and what sort of situation he was hoping for. Now, I have no idea how Mary Long got this information from or to Moonbeam, or even if it was true or false. I have had many feline friends in my life, and have been known to talk to animals, but psychic conversations are way beyond my ken.
According to the pet psychic, Moonbeam knew he was mischievous and got into trouble, though that was never his intention. He had an inquisitive nature, and needed discipline and guidance, and disliked mean people who punished harshly for minor transgressions. When he lived in a house with dogs, he didn’t think it fair that the dogs got to go for walks while he was relegated to life inside. He didn’t like being in homes with other cats because, handsome devil that he was, the other cats became jealous and picked fights with him. Moonbeam wanted to be an only child. He liked being inside closets.
When Mary informed him that he would be living in a shop, not a house, and that he would be alone sometimes, he indicated that was fine with him! He also revealed that he had been a Latin lover in one of his former lives, and was just tickled by the idea of living in a lingerie shop, being surrounded by women. Customers adored him, and he reveled in their attention, and being called handsome. I thought of changing his name to Romeow.
His coat was tawny, white and silver, but it was his blue eyes that captured people’s hearts. One of his parents had been Siamese, so he could be quite vocal at times. He was a good companion, following us around the shop, sitting on command, parking himself on top of whatever we were working on to make sure we got things right. He was lightning fast, and prone to bolting out the door of the shop whenever it opened, so we started taking him on walks up and down the stairs of our building, letting him explore, always mindful of his escape artist proclivities. . At one point we put a harness on him, and he would walk on a leash if we took him away for a weekend in the country. Moonie was a dog in cat’s clothing.
He and I formed a very deep bond, and much as I wanted to cuddle the daylights out of him, resisted the urge to be a smother-mother. In time he became a lap cat, and whenever Al sat down in one of the red chairs in our lingerie lounge, Moonie popped into his lap content to catnap there. Sometimes when he looked at me I could swear he was reading my mind and knew all my secrets.
Several months after the photo was taken, we returned from a visit to Al’s mom in Florida, to find Moonbeam limping. We took him to the vet immediately, who diagnosed it as a soft tissue injury. We took him back to the shop, giving him some extra attention before we went home for the night.
I thought about taking him home, but Bo Cat and Twitchy would harass him as an interloper, and I’d be up all night preventing the fur from flying. Moonie wouldn’t have much peace or rest. He was better off in his own environment. I thought about spending the night on the floor in the shop, but we’d just returned from a crazy and unpleasant weekend in Florida, where Alan’s mom was descending deeper into dementia. Our flight home was delayed by 4 hours. I was exhausted, and ready for a good night’s sleep.
The next morning Angela called us when she got to work around 9:00, and told us Moonie was sitting in the fitting room, unmoving and unresponsive. We rushed over and called our vet, who told us to take Moonie to the ER, which was fortunately only a few blocks away.
It was agonizing waiting for the doctors to tell us something. This was so out of the blue! When the doctors came back to us after hours of test after test, each one costing hundreds of dollars, the news was not good. Moonbeam had suffered a series of strokes, and was now blind, and for all intents and purposes, brain dead. They informed us about the extraordinary measures we could take to prolong his life, but I stopped listening after brain dead.
I would not torture this blessed boy with needles and scalpels and steroids. I knew I had to let him go, that saying goodbye was the most humane thing to do. A vet tech brought him to me, and I held him in my arms, cooing, “ Moonie, my beautiful boy”, stroking his ears, tears streaming from my eyes. . We watched as they inserted an IV line and gave him the drug that would put him in eternal sleep. I held his paws and buried my face in his fur until his body went slack.
I think much of what I have learned about love and responsibility comes from being a lifelong pet guardian, and the special connections I have felt with each one of my furry companions. Sometimes I look at this picture of Moonbeam and still cry, touched by the love I felt for him, and him for me.
]]>“I don’t have an appointment but they said you would help me anyway.” She breezed by the bra bar with a flourish of her hand, while simultaneously shrugging her compact body out of her jacket, and unwrapping her neck from a swath of shimmering silk.
I remained seated at my desk, chewing the inside of my lip, as I watched her make herself comfortable, and begin to browse the racks, and riffle through bras, trying to find her perfect needle in our haystack. During her last fitting with me a few years earlier, she had been cranky, and given me a tongue lashing for her perceived failure on my part to recycle broken plastic lingerie hangers, which she spied in the transparent, neon orange plastic trash receptacle in my fitting room just as I was about to unhook her bra.
“Don’t you know how plastic pollutes our planet?” she huffed. I knew. Believe me, I knew. “Why don’t you return the hangers you don’t need to the manufacturers for re-use or to be re-purposed? Can’t you recycle them or do anything besides throw them away? Plastic is the scourge of our time. Achh! This makes me so mad!” She growled at me.
She threw up her hands in disgust, ranting, plastic bags grrrowl, urban blight, harumph, and the black silk robe she had slipped on when I went to fetch some bras a few minutes before, unwrapped, revealing her Goddess 689, lace strapless longline bra with the overbust wires that increased the forward projection of her boobs. Her torpedo tits stared me right in the eye.
“This is so wasteful. 80% of all trash that winds up in the oceans is plastic! It’s just too bad that people aren’t as worried about plastic killing our oceans as they are about plastic surgery.”
She had a point there; when it came to plastic, there was no “away” when something was discarded. Some plastics last hundreds of years, and kill over a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals every year. I saw a video in which dead birds on Midland Island, two thousand miles from the nearest land mass, were autopsied, and their innards were filled with plastic waste. A recently found beached, deceased whale had over four hundred pounds of plastic in its guts.
I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and each time I tried to interject, “but…” she waved me off and continued her harangue. She was a moving target, pacing and muttering about the plastic and I couldn’t unhook the Goddess so she could try another bra. All I could do was listen and nod and say “you’re right” until her ire subsided and she remembered her boobs were the focus, not the plastic.
In my thirty eight year tenure as the Bra Tender, and very few times in my whole life, besides from my mother, had I received such a scolding, as if I alone had created the plastic plague with my little lingerie hangers. Which we re-used dozens, if not hundreds of times, trashing them only when they broke in pieces, or were missing too many parts to be useful any longer.
In all honesty, I suppose I added to the plastic problem in my own way. I bought water in plastic bottles, and also bought grab and go lunches packed in plastic boxes. Bra Tenders also used a lot of paper, our invoices were billed in duplicate, we had “file copies” and office copies, and hadn’t exactly embraced the paperless society. Alan insisted we had copies of everything, for us, and the accountant. We had copies of copies. And we used plastic shopping bags, in three sizes. And for all the nights that I lay awake, ruminating about the death of our oceans, and the little ones in the family living on a hot, parched Earth, I seemed not to be able to escape plastic.
But this fitting was about Bette’s boobs, not my failure as an eco-advocate. She had been harried and hurried, squeezing in the bra pit stop at the last minute, between rehearsals and a costume fitting. She admitted to being exhausted, and when I inquired as to how she was doing, she said, “I’m dancing my ass off.” She wanted to try something new in the way of bustier, she’d been wearing the Goddess since I first encountered her in 1978, and probably since long before then too. Innovations in the bra biz gave busty babes a bevy of new choices, and I was excited to school her. But the plastic had derailed her mission. And mine.
“Oh, I can’t do this now, “ she sighed, out of gas. “I have to be at my fitting in ten minutes. Just give me a new one of these.” She pointed to the Goddess, and I could tell she had mentally checked out so I had no choice but to back off. Pushing her at that point would have been useless and made her angry. Oh well. Not exactly the uplifting or divine experience I had hoped for.
The Divine Miss M, once dubbed Bathhouse Betty for her bawdy performances at the infamous Continental Bathhouse in NYC during the late 60’s and early to mid 70’s, Bette Midler was well known for her environmental activism. She boasted about living in an entirely plastic free home, and started the New York Restoration Project, which besides making improvements in city parks in low-income neighborhoods, employed a squad of “baggers” whose sole responsibility was to pull stray plastic bags out of trees and shrubbery in those spaces.
In 2014 she urged New York City Council members to support a bill that would charge a ten cent fee to users of plastic bags in order to reduce the number of them flying aimlessly around the city and surrounding green and water spaces. I shared her concern about the environment and had, in fact, asked several vendors whether they would accept unused or broken hangers for recycling, but to no avail. She left for her costume fitting an unhappy camper.
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Do Over
It’s not often we get a do-over in life, but apparently I had a second chance to make a good impression. I didn’t know if Bette remembered the plastic interaction as clearly as me, or even at all, so I approached her as I would an unfamiliar animal: prepared to make friends, but also ready to run like hell if she snapped at me.
“Hi Bette, so nice to see you again, you look fantastic!” She really did. The word new came to mind. “I hear you’re going out on tour, that must be very exciting. How can I help you today?” I seemed to tower over her, and felt huge next to her diminutive stature, but also felt cowed by her powerful presence.
“My new album is about to be released too. It’s The Girls.”
“How apt,” I quipped, giving my boobs a quick pump.
The album was a tribute to the girl groups who influenced and shaped her career, and she’d put a new twist on some of their old standards. In order to promote the album and upcoming tour, she would be making the rounds on all the chat shows. I thought to myself, so that’s what prompted her visit. Would she do The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon?
Bette’s charcoal grey, wool/lycra blend, sleeveless, jewel neck dress was simple and elegant, tailored perfectly to hug her curves. A narrow belt defined her small waist. I really liked her new shorter hair style, it accentuated her prominent cheekbones and flawless, pale skin. I wondered why she bothered to wear the dated looking wigs for her performances when this short, sophisticated do flattered her in so many ways. She projected power and confidence, and looked extraordinarily young…
She had ten years on me, but her skin was so taut, so firm, plump, and dewy. How was it that she didn’t have a frown line or wrinkle? No turkey neck, not a crows foot, nor a single bag under her eyes. Hmm. I was envious, and decided, the hell with aging gracefully.
Which, for the most part, I was doing. Maybe a little filler here or there, once or twice, and I did have my eyebrows tattooed by a world renowned artist, since plucking all mine out in high school, because that was the look of the day in the late 60s. As I aged, my face screamed for bolder eyebrows.
Clearly, since the past plastic polemic, Bette had reversed the aging process, and grown younger looking. Had her crack about plastic surgery during our last encounter been an indictment of the gossip mills, or of critics who knew that she planned to surgically erase the effects of time? I thought she looked better than she’d ever looked in her career, and that her “adapt or die” attitude allowed her to maintain superstar status and cultural relevance in a youth oriented, dog eat dog business and society.
“See this?” She placed jazz hands alongside her boobs to emphasize the fullness. “I look too wide here. I want a minimizer.”
“You can do much better than a minimizer, trust me.”
I knew well what Bette wanted, her superstar status didn’t give her any competitive leg up on defying time and gravity. Or did it, hmm. Many women shared a similar complaint about looking too wide on top, and also held a common misconception about “minimizers.” Many expected such a bra to magically reduce their F cups to look like Cs. Though this type of bra did flatten the breasts so that they appeared smaller, minimizers mashed the boobs like two lumps of pre-pizza dough, and created the shape of the Godfather’s grandmother. Minimizers pushed the breasts east and west, while attempting to contain their volume and reduce their projection. I personally didn’t think minimizers created an attractive look, flat and wide, with the boobs hovering under the armpits. Bad, bad, bad.
The trick to a longer, leaner torso is to capture and contain all the breast tissue, and place it up north, centered high on the chest wall, above the ribs and off the belly, away from and out of the armpits. This creates a slimming effect, we appear to be ten pounds thinner and ten years younger in a New York minute. A boob job without scalpel, sutures, scars or silicone.
For many of us, especially those with more than fifty thousand miles on our cabooses, time and gravity have taken their toll on our physical appearance. Each time I see my face in a mirror, it hurts to see how far my skin has slid off its cheekbones, the sagging jawline and impending jowls, just like Mom’s. I am compelled to gawk at god awful infomercials for the Lifestyle Lift surgery that promises to restore youth and beauty to my profile, and ponder the question, Am I that vain? Why yes, yes I am.
Boob droop is a common affliction, and even young women with heavy breasts, sag some. As I tell my customers, gravity is the strongest force in the universe, and a good bra is our only defense against the constant drag on our mammaries. My boobs started developing when I was ten, and even after reduction surgery in my thirties, they not only continue to grow with age, they also get longer as they head further south. It’s not the stuff dreams are made of.
That’s why it’s so important to have a well fitted bra, so the underwires, which add shape, capture all of the breast tissue in a neat little package, which eliminates those side boobs, lifts and centers the breasts, and puts them back up, where they started. We happened to stock a few styles of bras which created this desired silhouette: long and lean.
I escorted the Divine one into a storage alcove that doubled as a fitting room, and silently wished that she had made a proper appointment so we could have worked in the luxury of our more spacious one. The alcove was jammed with bras from floor to ceiling, and felt a bit confined, and had been set up strictly for display and storage when we first moved into the space. Back then I was the only fitter. Ten years later, we had two fitters plus me, and two fitting rooms booked on the hour from 10:00a.m until 6:00 p.m Monday through Friday, with five hours on Saturday.
It was often not enough to accommodate the demand during the peak of bridal season when it coincided with the Spring season on Broadway, graduations, proms.
“Unzip me,” she said, turning her back to me. After I did, she slid her arms out of the dress and let the top of it fall around her waist. She turned around to face me, and her stomach was toned and flat, though clearly a fetus had once been in residence. Her legs were shapely, arms toned, and she obviously worked her bodily rigorously to maintain her figure.
“Whaddya think?” she asked about the bra she wore.
“Hmm, it’s too big.” I grabbed a fistful of her Wacoal bra, then unclasped the back to look at the tag. “I think 34F is a better size for you, maybe even 32. I have a couple of “magic” bras that will do just what you want.” I cupped her breasts and slightly squeezed them in and up to show how the new bra would shape her. My hands on approach didn’t faze her, though some women were surprised to be handled thusly.
Many women compared their bra fitting with getting a mammogram. I once worked with a young bride who surprised me when she said, “I was the tech who did your last mammogram. Now you have the chance to get even.”
The bra I wanted Bette to try did wonderful things to restore the youth and beauty to the bosom. I can attest to the fact that women instantly stand up straighter and are taller when their boobs ain’t draggin’ them down. I understood that us middle aged birds liked our comfort as much as our beauty, and I wanted to earn her trust before boldly taking her where she had never gone before. She had been wearing size 36 bands, and if I had my druthers, I’d bring her down to a size 32, though I would start with 34F. It does take some adjusting to the fit of a new bra, especially when the band is snug, and a woman is so accustomed to the relaxed fit of a bra that is “comfortable”, and too big to do what it’s meant to.
Over the years I have worked with various costume designers or stylists and dressers who worked with Bette on various gigs, and watched her career evolve on a parallel path to mine. Bra Tenders provided fishnet hosiery and other skintimates for her Las Vegas revue The Showgirl Must Go On between 2008 and 2010. We knew some of the same people in a six degrees of separation way - oh, you know so and so, ha, me too! In fact, Mark Shaiman, the Tony winning lyricist of Hairspray, produced her new album and convinced her to sing her own version of Ronnie Spector’s classic hit Be My Baby. Ronnie Spector is a Bra Tenders customer. As vast as our world is, the entertainment community is rather small and tightly knit.
I don’t know why bra fitting is such a mystery for the majority of women, who know neither their size, nor how to put on a bra. You can’t just strap the thing on and call it a day: you must adjust the bust. Women are prone to buy bras because they’re cute, rather than how they fit.
You cannot squeeze a pair of G cups into a double D, it just does not work. That first creates all the gripes women have with bras - it rides up, the straps fall down, boobs fall out the bottom of the cups, quadraboobs and cups that runneth over, side boobs, backfat, back cleavage. Yet most women accept the bulges, red marks and discomfort caused by ill fitting bras as normal. And, one bra does not fit all occasions. If you wear a low cut, little black dress, you need a different kind of bra than if you’re wearing overalls to go apple picking. If you’re going horse back riding, I hope you’re wearing the best sport bra money can buy.
“But do they minimize?” She asked. I had to admire her singular focus, even though that sort of stubbornness irked me. Hadn’t she heard a thing I said? .
Our mothers had brainwashed us early about minimizers, and wanted us to wear them because they were big, ugly contraptions that suppressed our burgeoning, bouncy, ripe womanhood, and which no hormone crazed, boob obsessed, adolescent boy could possibly unhook with one hand.
“They are not technically minimizers, no, though they will eliminate this fullness that you’re concerned about. Let me show you. There’s nothing to lose by trying it on. You don’t have to like it, just keep an open mind, OK?” She assented and I left her alone in the alcove, while I pulled the stock.
When I came back, she was wearing a demi bra three cup sizes too small, one she found hanging on the wall, and boobage spilled in all directions. I held up the two bestsellers that delighted women of all ages, even women who didn’t want to wear a bra.
“Women love the way this bra shapes and uplifts the bosom. It creates a gentle swell of cleavage, and elongates the torso to visually subtract ten pounds.”
“How do you know all of these bras?”
“I’ve been in the business a very long time. I’ve known you, sort of, for ages. You shopped at a store where I worked, S&S on West 50th street.”
“I remember that place. You worked there?”
“Yep, first contact with Goddess 689 bra. You wore 34DD then. At some point you switched to 36D. You once bought something softer, but tend to gravitate to that Goddess. I guess it works with your costumes. We supplied the corsets to Stepford Wives.”
“There was some heavy undergarments in that one.”
“Are you ready to try?”
“Let’s go.” I unhooked her bra. She talked about the custom made body shaper she wore while performing, made by one of the costume shops, Matera or Donna Langman, my memory isn’t clear. “I want to find a bra they can use to “frankenstein” into a bodysuit,” she said. I adjusted the straps, swooped and scooped her breasts until each sat perfectly centered in it’s own cup, way up north.
“Alrighty then, take a look at that,” I said, admiring my handiwork, gently turning her by the shoulders to face the mirror. “See how your boobs are forward, and there is no fullness at all on the sides. Nice lift, natural shape. Pull up the top of your dress and let’s see what you think.” I felt like a proud mama. The girls looked so damn good.
“Zip me up,” she said, and I obliged. She took a step back and evaluated her figure, turning to the left, then the right. “How do you find all these bras that you sell here?”
“Well, I go to trade shows and showrooms and look at the lines. When people ask for me a particular item, I relentlessly pursue it. I consult with some of the designers for some of the brands, and have requested certain tweaks to bras that could improve their functionality, like adding a tab so the straps can be converted to different positions. I take requests, so if you need a special sort of büstenhalter, I can look for it when I go to market. Call me anytime you need something lingerie related.” You had to love the Germans - büstenhalter, or BH, literally meant ‘bust holder.”
“I love trade shows, they’re so much fun. I went to one a few weeks ago.” I wondered what sort of trade shows a diva attended, but didn’t ask.
“I don’t have so much fun when I go. It’s work. A lot of schmoozing, everyone is selling something.”
“Well, let me know when you go. Maybe I’ll go too.”
“Well, that would shake things up at the Javits Center! I can see the trade mag headlines, Divine Miss M Tours Curve Show. That would really freak out my sales reps! What a headline!
I knew a lot of exhibitors at the Curve Intimate Apparel Expo, and most of them were very well aware of my Broadway connection. But if I showed up with Bette Midler at my side, a lot of folks would plotz, and a lot would kvell over something so wonderful. I could see the selfies now, every sales rep would want a photo with their brand name and logo and Bette. Oy.
“So, how do you like this bra?” I asked her.
“I like it. I see what you mean. It doesn’t mash me down, and it’s slimming on the sides. What else have you got?”
I showed her another bra, and this one had a deeper cup that lifted the breasts from underneath, and gently pressed them upward, closer against the chest. This reduced the projection, so it had a minimizing effect which was not dowdy. This bra created no cleavage, and helped with buttons-don’t-close syndrome. One enterprising entrepreneur I knew had tried to make bra sized blouses, but after many trials and errors, hadn’t been able to figure out the right proportions, and they didn’t fit very well, yet, for their hefty price.
“I like this one too. Show me one more and then I’ll decide. I appreciate you squeezing me in today. Pun intended.” Aw shucks.
“Its my pleasure. You have a fabulous figure, and with this new bra, you’re even more divine than ever.”
But something was rotten in Stepford, as Kidman’s Joanna soon found out. The women, stunningly beautiful and perfect, were actually remote controlled automatons, and were programmed to be subservient to their husbands, look pretty and never question anything their men did or said. Apparently, according to this film, the only way to feminize a group of former corporate powerhouses, was to lobotomize and robotize them. Stepford was no place for a woman with a mind of her own.
Close’s character was the ringleader, and she had the amazing ability to increase the other women’s breast sizes with her handy, dandy remote control. The costumes by Ann Roth created the ideal 1950’s silhouettes for the wives, the dresses having fitted bodices and full skirts.
Imagine coming home after a hectic day of golf, and there she is, your beautiful remote controlled Barbie. She’s wearing a gingham dress, with a poofy skirt, showing a lot of cleavage, yea, and red fuck-me-pumps. Her hair and makeup are perfect, unsullied by humidity or perspiration, even though she’s been baking, braising and roasting delicious dishes since you left for the clubhouse so many hours ago. Her mouth is moist, cherry red and glossy, and she flashes that perfect smile at you, that smile, just for you. She’s eagerly, anxiously waiting to press a gentle kiss onto your cheek, and leave a lipsticked stain, her brand, upon your face. She’ll look at you and giggle. She hands you the perfectly concocted cocktail, just the way you like it. The mere thought of pleasing you makes her orgasm, it’s so damn cute. She takes your jacket and man bag before going back to the mirepoix on the stove, and blows you a kiss.
The uber feminine clothes, which Roth called “a man’s fantasy” added to the ridiculousness of the male ideal of the perfect woman, so the designer wanted to see a variety of waist cinching garments to help create the exaggerated body proportions of 36-24-36. We lent the design team a variety of bustiers, waist cinchers, and other shapewear with transformative super powers for the women to try with the dresses. We had the opportunity to take a potentially significant order for multiples of the garments that helped the designer achieve her vision for the characters. Although we didn’t get any credit for our movie work, it still gave me a thrill to know that Bra Tenders, moi, played a part in the overall creative process of bringing the characters of Stepford to life.
In an interview in the Daily News in 2004, Ann Roth explained, "When the women sat down, I wanted to see a wonderful petticoat. I wanted the feeling of a bra and a feeling that the bra is holding up something substantial. And I wanted the feeling of a waistline that is very in and stays in, even when she's making three dozen cupcakes for her child's birthday at school.”
The designer chose a bustier with padded demi cups and a deep V center gore. The back plunged down to the waist, and the band of the bra was a waist cincher, with thick, heavy elastic side panels that whittled the waist by at least two inches. The Flattering Me bra had been created by a wedding dress designer who couldn’t find an undergarment that worked under his gowns, so he designed and created one that nipped, tucked and lifted the way he wanted. We agreed to test it in our shop and it became an immediate hit with brides for their gowns from couture designers. The hourglass shape it sculpted was exactly the look Ann Roth wanted, and they ordered two dozen pieces.
Though successful, as a small business we couldn’t afford to keep a vast amount of inventory in stock. We had a plethora of styles to choose from, but only stocked one or two pieces in each of the sizes, and reordered when necessary. We had a few of the pieces in stock, but needed to order the majority of them from the distributor.
“Hello Coco, it’s your favorite Bra Tender, live from New York! The brides love your bra, and I need to place a sizable order now.”
“Lori, good to hear from you!. That’s good news, a reorder! Has anyone famous bought my bra?” I could hear him smile, with his sexy Spanish accent.
“Well, I do need these bras for a movie. Write this down - eighteen 34B, nude, two 36D, and four 34C. Nude as well. And I need them by the end of the week.”
“A movie? That’s great! Which one?” he asked excitedly. Coco loved our showbiz connection, and he hounded me to get celebrities to tout his bra.
“I can’t tell you that Coco, but if you’re nice to me, I’ll think about it. And Coco, we’re working with a prominent designer for the first time - I’m counting on you to help me make a good impression. The deadline is as tight as the brides want the corset.”
I was edgy as the day progressed and didn’t hear back from him. When I finally did, Coco didn’t have good news. “Lori, I do not have the eighteen pieces in nude in 34B to give you. I have the D cup bras, and one C. This hurts me. Here’s the thing. In my factory, I have all the bodices ready to go. I have been waiting for one of my suppliers to deliver the hooks and eyes for the back closures for a few weeks now. That’s the only part of the garment still missing.”
“But what good is the bra if you can’t close it? Oh shit. Do you have any other colors available? Ivory, white? I’ll have to ask my customer if that’s OK, but I need to know if we can deliver first.”
“Lori, listen. I tell you it’s a strange situation.” He phumphered for a bit, I stayed silent. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Just say it Coco. Are you going out of business? Are you done? Did I find this great product, and now have to forget it?”
“No, no, it’s not like that at all. You know this country is at war now, yes?” It sounded like jess.
“Yes, I’m aware of that. What does that have to do with anything?” I couldn’t wait to hear this one. Bullshit alert...
“Well, the hooks and eyes we need for the back closure...there is only one or two companies that still make these. Deliveries are all backed up because of high demand.” Blah blah blah...I can smell it.
“This sucks and puts me in a really bad position. What does the war have to do with anything, anyway?”
“Well, the US army have requisitioned all the hook and eyes from my distributors to use in parachutes and other war materiel. Any company who makes these hook and eyes, have to give them to military. The military take all the ones my supplier allotted me for the bustiers, and now that factory is working all the time to make more hooks. But not for me. Just for the army.”
“Well I’ll be damned.” Who woulda thunk that war and brassieres had anything to do with each other, except maybe that women soldiers needed bras. “Coco, listen, you have to help me. Please. It’s the first time we’re working with this designer and I can’t leave a bad impression. That would be terrible.” Ann Roth was a grand dame in the costume world, movies, Broadway, everything. Getting off on the right foot meant a lot.
“But what can I do?”
“Here’s what you can do. Please call some of your other accounts and ask to buy back the bras from them. Or find them for me and I will buy them directly. You must have a few bridal stores that carry it around the country, right?”
“Yes, yes, we have many accounts.” He started to name them.
“Then please scrounge around and find me eighteen 34B’s, any combination of nude, white, ivory. No black. Please Coco.”
“Ok Lori, I like you guys. Let me see what I can do.”
“How much time do you need?” I asked, fingers crossed.
“I will start by seeing what I have in stock at my bridal store. I will call you back tonight. What time do you close?”
“The phone forwards to Alan’s cell when the shop is closed. If you have to call at midnight, call at midnight.”
“OK, I get back to you.” I didn’t think I’d be able to breathe until I heard from him.
Alan called the design associate to explain the situation. Just as we had been shocked at the weird circumstances, so was she. She gave us some flexibility with the sizes, agreeing to take some larger sizes that could be altered if need be. We told her we’d call as soon as we heard news, one way or another.
The world was still reeling from the 9/11 attacks, and now in April of 2003, we had this additional complication in our business, unbelievable as it was. At first I didn’t know if I believed Coco, and then thought, who could make up a story like that?
War had managed to unhook the bra making supply chain.
I resisted my impulse to pick up the phone and call him every half hour for an update. I knew how to be a pain in the ass until I got what I needed, but in this case, it seemed pointless, so Alan and I went about our business, grateful for the distractions of work.
That night about 9:00, Coco called from his cell phone. “I have good news. I had six nude 34B in my store. I have an account in Texas who has another six. I’m waiting for another few bridal specialty stores to get back to me. So far, at least we have twelve. The Texas store is ending the bras to me by two day air. When I receive them, how do you want to me to send?”
“That’s really good news Coco. Please send them FEDX overnight.”
“OK. Will get back to you tomorrow, I hope, about the rest.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
The next day when we got to the shop, our neighbor Victoria, a wizard with scissors who owned the hair salon next door, came by to say hello. Her body reminded me of a Tootsie Pop. She was at least a hundred pounds overweight, completely round, on stick skinny legs. She had a raucous laugh, and her pup Norbie, was best friends with our cat Moonbeam.
“Hey ya’ll, I’m doing a fundraiser for the troops, collecting things to send them to boost their morale. A lady who lives near us in the Poconos has her husband stationed over there and he said they’re asking for old pantyhose. Can you help?”
“So what, they playing dress up between rounds of artillery fire?” I asked incredulously.
“Bwahaha, shit, no, nothing like that. They’re in the desert, and the sand is mucking up all the equipment -the mechanisms on the rifles, the motors of the tanks. The sand gets into the moving parts and gums them up. They said pantyhose make great filters. They are sheer, so they don’t interrupt the airflow, but they make a great barrier against the sand.”
“And how did they find that out? Some drag queen manage to enlist?”
“I don’t know Lori. What I do know is that they asked for help, and I want to help. Are you in?”
“Sure, we’ll do what we can. What else do they need?”
Vic and I talked for a while, and when she returned to her salon, Moonbeam wanted to go with her. Norbie, an affectionate though neurotic Yorkie, was about the same size as Moonie, and they shared their water, food and toys with each other. Victoria had taken care of Moonie after 9/11 when we couldn’t get into the city because of the bridge and tunnel closures, and we used to laugh that Norbie and Moonie were the first interspecies gay couple. I felt grateful that Victoria and her chubby hubby Lenny, a massage therapist, had befriended Al and me, and we spent many weekends with them in the Poconos, cooking and drinking tequila shots while playing pictionary. I was happy Moonie had a friend too.
Right after Victoria left, I had a brainstorm and rushed over to the salon, excited.
“Vic, I have a great idea! You know they use a lot of pantyhose on Broadway, and they toss a lot, too. Most of them are only good for one wear, and as soon as they nick or ladder, boom, they’re trash. I’ll ask the wardrobe supes to collect the hose they would normally toss, and save them for us. Then we can send them over, and include little notes, Brooke Shields wore these pantyhose in Wonderful Town on Broadway. Hope they save your ass! I’m sure Broadway would be happy to contribute to the soldiers’ safety, even though most of the community doesn’t support the war.”
“That’s brilliant! I love that idea. I have a collection box in the salon, and we’ll send it off every week. Just bring me what you got and I’ll take care of it.”
“You got it! I’m going to get busy on the phone.”
I felt relieved to have something to work on while waiting for Coco to check in. When I hadn’t heard from him, I couldn’t resist, and called him.
“Hi Lori, good that you called me. I found another six bustiers from two accounts. I have told them to just send to you directly, instead of sending to me first, to save some time. I pay the shipping.”
“Thank you CoCo, thank you so much!! I really appreciate this. You have no idea how relieved I am.” The knot in my stomach loosened its grip on my bowels.
“Now, will you tell me what movie?” Hmm. Did I have to reveal my customer to express my gratitude? Al and I talked about it briefly and decided that it would be OK, since this was essentially a done deal with the movie already.
“OK, Coco, I’ll tell you. It’s a remake of The Stepford Wives, starring Nicole Kidman, amongst others.”
“I really like her. So she’s going to wear my bra?”
“Yes, all the women will wear the bra. Bette Midler, Glenn Close”
“Wow, Lori! Can I use that to advertise?”
“You can do whatever you want, though I would appreciate your discretion, at least until the movie is released.”
“Ok, Ok, sure. I understand.”
“Besides, don’t you want to see how the costumes look before you start bragging?"
“You have a good point there. I love all these women. I can’t wait to see.”
“Please send us an invoice, and any other charges. Thank you so much Coco. You saved our asses.”
Very much relieved, I began making phone calls to request dead pantyhose from Fiddler on the Roof, Wonderful Town, Chicago, 42nd Street, Caroline or Change, and Nine. A few weeks later I had collected about forty pounds of pantyhose. We cleaned out our stockroom and tossed in odds and ends of samples we had collected over time too. We threw in some edible goodies, donations from local businesses, gum, Ricola, first aid supplies, magazines, and notes of support and encouragement for the troops. I imagined their weary, fatigued and dusty faces as they read the notes explaining the origins of the pantyhose. I hoped it brought a smile or two. “Brooke Shields wore these on her mile long legs.”
In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined the scenarios we had we just encountered. The phrase Bullets over Broadway stuck in my head as I thought of the unlikely effect of war on the intimate apparel industry. I remembered that Woody Allen had written and directed a crime movie of that same title in 1994, but I liked my new version better.
In those days following September 11, The Broadway community had worked tirelessly to keep the stage magic alive in the face of great odds. Our city had been locked down and placed on alert, and was guarded by men in riot gear armed with assault rifles on every corner in Times Square and the theater district. Tickets sales slumped, and for the first few days following the attack, Broadway went dark. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and whenever a plane flew over the city, a no-fly zone, I ducked.
I was grateful that the show must go on, and when we all got back to work, everyone had a 9/11 story. Work kept us going, and I remembered a movie about a theater in Paris during WWII, and the actors who put on fantastical shows while bombs dropped left and right, and thus maintained their sanity and humanity. The show must go on.
]]>Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique illustrated the frustration and despair of a generation of housewives, many college grads, who felt trapped and unfulfilled in their comfortable suburban lives. My own mother, herself a high school dropout, married late at the age of 27, and suffered from the drudgery of housewifery and motherhood - it just wasn’t the fairy tale she’d expected. Embittered, she wondered, is that all there is?
My crabby mother and chauvinist father fought loudly and often about what a “woman’s place” should be in the world. Dad believed a woman’s place was in the home, and that a man was “the king of his castle.” Children were to be seen and not heard, and the order of the day insofar as parenting was “do as I say, not as I do.”
A woman’s job was to please her man and make him comfortable and happy, and the more Dad demanded Mom obey his dictums, the more vociferous her protests. Even innocent conversations became a battle.
“Hon, I’d like to learn how to drive.” Mom mentioned shortly after we obtained our very first family vehicle, a champagne colored V8 Ford LTD with a black vinyl top, in 1968. It was Dad’s pride and joy.
“Over my dead body,” Dad replied. “Just what the world needs is women on the road. Women don’t drive. Period.”
A few years later, after he dropped dead out of the blue, Mom took driving lessons within 3 months. She passed her road test on the second attempt.
“Take that fuckface!” She stood before the large, ornately framed portrait of him that hung on a wall in the living room, and gave him the finger. “How do you like them apples?”
I knew, at a very young age, that my place would never be at the feet of some man, subservient or submissive. If I were to ever become betrothed, my vows would not include the word “obey”. And I know my dear old dad thought he was being cute when he called me from another room to change the channel on the television, back in the ancient days, when I was the remote control, but something about it irked me too. Did his rules about women also apply to his daughters, and were we doomed to the same fate as Mom? Ugh.
As a Baby Boomer, and the first generation to grow up with television, my daily diet of world news consisted of the Civil Rights movement, Feminism, Women’s Lib, Viet Nam war protesting, sign carrying, dope smoking, peace activist hippies. I was a curious girl, and National Geographic magazine, Star Trek, and Mission Impossible on TV, made me hungry to know more about the world beyond Brooklyn, NY.
I wanted to be more, and do more than just have babies and wash clothes, floors, and dishes. I didn’t understand why everyone said, “Girls can’t do that” when I mentioned wanting to be an astronaut after seeing the first manned space flight, Apollo 7, on TV.
The whole progression of love, marriage, baby carriage, didn’t really appeal to me. All the grown ups I saw seemed miserable, bickering over whether the meat was too well done, or if the shirts had enough starch. Even so-called happy couples sniped at each other over how she poured the coffee, or “use your napkin! Don’t make a mess!.”
I remember my dear old grandmother following Papa around the house, turning off the lights he’d just switched on, or hovering like a helicopter, waiting to empty his ashtray as soon as he flicked an ash from his cigarette into it. I know it drove Papa crazy, and occasionally he would let loose with a “Woman, please, leave me alone!” I didn’t have happy-couple behavior modeled for me, so the feminists’ fight for equal opportunity for women provided a brighter outlook for me and my future.
As the Cuban Missile crisis geared up, and our country became more entrenched in the Cold War, and atomic weapons threatened to annihilate every living thing on Earth, we practiced duck and cover in school, and the world became a terrifying place to me. I didn’t think the world needed more children, especially after hearing my nightly admonishment when I couldn’t finish my supper, “children are starving in China.”
The world sped up, and I believed in the promise of easy communication with Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone, or being beamed to distant galaxies through teleportation as in Star Trek. Most of the TV programs had bad guys fighting good guys, and I was never sure who really won. The good guys always had another fight ahead of them. There didn’t seem to peace anywhere, except maybe inside I Dream of Jeannie’s bottle.
I became self aware in those days, knew that I would not allow myself to be limited by a man’s archaic notion of gender roles. The whole world seemed poised on the cusp of enormous shifts in the cultural, political and sociological zeitgeist. This was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, a time for change. And Gloria was leading the charge.
Our office manager Angela approached me as she was booking an appointment over the phone. I saw the light on my desk phone blinking - the caller was on hold.
“Lori? I’m on the phone with a woman making an appointment for a Gloria Steinem. Do you know who she is? They asked for you. Do you want to work with her, or should I book it with Cristal?”
“You don’t know who Gloria Steinem is? Are you kidding?” I was aghast.
“I’ve heard of her, but I don’t know what she did. Should I?”
“Well, hell, she’s only the mother of all feminists!” Holy crap, Gloria Steinem! From bra burning to bra fitting. With me!
“Well, hell yes you should know! She’s only a founding feminist mother! The woman is an icon, a crusader, a real life superhero! She’s the reason it’s possible for women to even own businesses! Wow, Gloria Steinem. She’s been my hero since I was 13. Yes, I will work with her.” Hot damn!
“OK. I’ll book it with you, ” Angela said, apparently unaffected by the enormity of the bra- burning, mother-of-the-movement coming in for a fitting.
I felt a little sad, too, that young women like Angela were often unaware of the struggles of prior generations of women, and that she took her high paying job so matter of factly. I never had things quite so easy, and now have an abiding appreciation of the struggles, and strides feminists made for all womankind.
Television shows in the late 60’s depicted a new generation of women, rebelling against the status quo, asserting their independence, with careers and jobs and men. That Girl, and The Mary Tyler Moore show in 1966 depicted young women living on their own in New York City. I wanted to be Mary Richards. I wanted to be That Girl, Anne Marie. I wanted to live in a studio apartment on upper Madison Avenue with a window facing the street, and sip coffee there in the quiet of the morning, watching the city come awake. Why couldn’t a woman define her happiness and success by things other than husband and children? A few years ago, Marlo Thomas came to Bra Tenders for a fitting, and I had the chance to tell her how much her show influenced me. Circle Complete.
Mine was the first generation of women with enormous potential and the opportunity to move through the world in a new way. In the 1970’s droves of women entered the workforce in record numbers, forsaking love, marriage and the baby carriage. In this age of Facebook, I am not surprised to know that so many of my female high school classmates are entrepreneurs and female business owners today: lawyers, business mediators and consultants, artists, psychologists, professors, photographers. The Women’s Liberationists cleared the way for us to not only chase, but catch our dreams.
I had butterflies in my stomach on the day of her appointment. Even though I’d worked with actors and movie stars, both face to face and vicariously through wardrobe personnel, meeting my lifelong hero was something else altogether. In my junior high school class in 1972 we dedicated our annual Sing production to Women’s Lib. We explored what could have been possible for women, and the world, had Eve come before Adam. I even remember some song lyrics, set to one of the tune of Fiddler on the Roof:
When God created Eve, she saw no need for man/And here is where you’ll see just what’s the Master Plan/ And then came Adam timid as he was/naked as jaybird probably because/Even would only give him pennies here and there/to buy some underwear.” Reminds me of the old feminist joke - “when God created man she was just kidding.”
The feminist movement for Mom, was a call to arms, and she became what Rush Limbaugh referred to as a feminazi. All the pent up anger she carried deep within her gushed forth into the universe in a steady stream of vituperative man-bashing. She blamed MEN for all the woes of the world, and became determined to make them pay, starting with Dad. I remember her brief boycott of housework, her refusal to cook dinner or take his shirts to the cleaners. All this only enraged Dad, and he withheld household cash until Mom returned to sanity and resumed “doing her job.” The nasty cycle of hurt and retribution went on and on until divorce seemed the only reasonable way out. We kids were always caught in the middle, our loyalties to each and either parent was tested daily.
I remember my paternal grandmother, Helen, with her enormous, pendulous breasts that hung down to her knees, and her inquisitive, blue eyes, struggling to maintain her own sovereignty. Family legend posits that Helen wanted to be a mortician when she was a young woman, and the family collectively shuddered at the thought and gave her an ultimatum: Them, or that “crazy thing” she wanted to do.
She and her sisters were a pack of independent minded, brash, raucous women who smoked and drank with the best of ‘em. My Aunt Linda got married in a red wedding dress. “I’m no virgin, and it ain’t no secret.”
As a kid I believed girls could do anything boys could do. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted opportunity to knock for me. Even as a thirteen year old, I knew girls may have been the fairer sex, but we possessed a lot of power. Why else would all the older family women tell me “don’t try so hard. Let him win. It’s not nice for girls to win.”
When it came to paddle ball and my new boyfriend Brian, of course I wanted to win; beating him was the purpose of playing. I didn’t begrudge him the right to win, as my mother would. I believed “may the best person win.” For me, that is what feminism represented. I wanted to be given the chance to prove “I can do everything.”
In 1975 I began employment at my first full time job at the Etienne Aigner shoe factory on West 18th street. The company distributed leather footwear and accessories, and I was hired for office/stock work. I was still naive and oh-so trusting of people, even after all the shit with Mom, Yale, and her other Men. Sometimes I think that’s a miracle - to survive such betrayals and still be able and willing to trust.
I worked there for a few months, pulling shoes off shelves in the warehouse to ship; taking sales orders over the phone; processing orders for shoes that came in 10 sizes, including halves, 3 widths, and four colors. I became a whiz on the adding machine, which is what we had before calculators. I received a promotion pretty quickly, and was fast tracked for another, for which Ken Hillman would train me.
Ken was a tall, skinny guy with round, stooped shoulders and a hawk like face who smoked like a chimney and smelled like an ashtray. He saw himself as Mr. Executive, cool, and hot shit. After I worked there for six months, my next phase of employee development involved a road trip to King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, to attend a shoe show. Ken assured me I would have my own room for the overnight, told me not to worry. That was my first trade show, and I looked forward to meeting all the salesmen who phoned their orders to me, and to get a sneak preview at the latest trends coming out of Italy for the next season.
Mr. Cool-Hotshit didn’t stop staring at my boobs the entire car ride there. It was warm out, and I was 20 years old. I wore a white halter-top meant for girls with half the boobs I had, and regretted wearing it as soon as I got in the car. I put on the cardigan I brought along, saying I was chilly with the car windows open. I was always self conscious about my body, and usually wore loose fitting and oversized tops to hide myself. It was hard to tell what shape moved under my father’s sweaters.
Now I have to wonder why I chose to wear such a revealing, out of character, top that day. I suppose I felt grown up, I was an adult, with a real job that held future potential. Was it ideal? Nope. It was a stepping stone. My first office job, where I excelled, quickly, and wanted to do well. I was hungry to know adulthood, womanhood.
But I didn’t quite know how to be a woman yet, even though I wasn’t still a girl. I didn’t know what, or where, my boundaries lay. Much as a young feminist as I was, all I knew was, on TV, tits took you far, and men were suckers for big boobs. Which I had. Whenever I had even modestly exposed more skin, a v neck top, the opposite sex zoomed right in on the boobs. If I had a dime for every time a man said to me “you have such beautiful eyes,” without ever raising his gaze up from my chest…
I was confused by mixed messaging. I wanted to earn my rewards, whatever those might be, on my merits, talent, skills. Anyone can fuck. But not just anyone became a CEO. Did women in positions of leadership and power get there on their merits, or did they use their womanly wiles to achieve more, quicker?
Did I intend to seduce Ken, even though I found him physically revolting? His Brut cologne clashed with the ashy smell that emanated from his pores. His breath was more foul, especially after he had a few gin martinis. Was that a new game I had to learn, fuck the boss to get ahead?
I had a relative who fucked her way into a house in Malibu, and my mother and her were like oil and water. My mother was seething with jealousy and envy that her sister in law was living a fantasy life, flitting from island to island in the Caribbean, sleeping her way up the ladder of social success. If that was the game, I was way out of my league.
Femininity did not come naturally, nor easily, to me. Having to dress up in girl clothes made me feel awkward. I only suffered a lack of confidence whenever I had to “dress pretty,” unlike so many friends who sucked up power from the personas they created to dress up in. Sometimes when I spotted an elegant, graceful, confident woman, who was powerful and poised, and knew how to grab life by the balls, I got a little jealous. Became a little intimidated. I couldn’t walk in heels, didn’t even own a pair. Ken gave me a pair of black pumps, beginners heels he called them. I hated them, but smiled and said thank you.
Shortly after arriving at the Holiday Inn, I learned he had only booked one room. Ding ding ding! Well, there was no way I was going to sleep with, or fuck, Ken Hillman. I didn’t make it a secret that I was annoyed. I was not some dopey dame with big tits so easily duped, though it seemed as if Ken believed otherwise. That job was not worth fucking him for.
We talked shop over cocktails in the motel bar, and then had what he tried to make into a romantic dinner. I was angry, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at how earnest Ken was being, how sexy he thought he was. Now I wasn’t especially picky about men, as evidenced by my mother referring to one of my early boyfriends as “the gorilla.” But Ken’s long, gray face, prominent beak, pencil thin lips and stringy comb-over, not to mention the reek of stale cigarettes, repulsed me. When he leaned in close to me, I held my breath. I was so confused.
When it was bedtime and I laid down on one of the two full size beds in the double room, Ken got in behind me, and I deepened my breathing as if I were asleep. His stale eau d’ashtray scent permeated the space, clung to the scratchy sheets, and it was hard to suppress a little cough.
“Let me sleep, please,” I said in the sleepiest voice I could muster through my disgust and fear.
“You know what this means about your promotion…” he whispered in my ear, while trying to pry open my legs, which were closed tighter than a clam.
I took a deep breath, had enough of the game. I threw the covers off and sat up. I didn’t turn around to look at him.
“Yeah, it means you’re an asshole.”
He moved away from me, but left a heavy cloud behind. We barely spoke the rest of the weekend, though he introduced me around at the show, smiled and kept his cool. We barely spoke on the ride back. Neither of us spoke about it again. I went to work and did my job. Ken was on the road checking on accounts, and wasn’t in the office much.
About ten days later I was introduced to a woman named Shirley, who had already become well acquainted with Ken, darling. Shirley was hired for the job I was supposed to move into. She was closer to Ken’s age, mid thirties, and had a short, tight body that she liked to wrap in close fitting clothes. She had nicely defined biceps, and wore her black hair cropped short in the back and full on top. She wore cat-eye liner and false lashes. She looked hot. She was smart, too, and knew how to play the game. I felt out of my league, and like a kid.
There was no place for me to complain that I’d been passed over for promotion because of sexual harassment. That happened to women all the time, there hadn’t been that societal shift yet. Women were treated like sex objects, didn’t have the right to complain, it was our choice to enter a man’s work world, not theirs, and we had to deal with the consequences. Who would believe a twenty year old girl over Ken Hillman, Big Man On Campus?
On the day of Gloria’s fitting, I was flustered, had the same insecurity as my 20 year old self. I wanted to be professional, my god, the woman who made it possible for me to own my business, sought ME out! I wasn’t sure how effusive to be, whether I should drop to my knees as beholding royalty, or just welcome her as every other woman into my domain. I felt immense pride that, of all the stores she might have gone to shop, she chose Bra Tenders to shop for the ubiquitous item that kicked off the women’s lib movement.
As always, I decided to just be myself, and do what felt right in the moment.
“I’m really honored to meet you Gloria. Please come this way.” I offered a firm handshake, very careful not to be wimpy about it. I showed her to a seat in the lingerie lounge and allowed her to get settled before escorting her into the fitting room. “There’s a water cooler in the corner, and the rest room key is hanging to the right of the front door. We’ll get started in a moment.”
I felt as nervous as a showgirl in her first gig on Broadway. I couldn’t decide how to address her. Here we were, Gloria and me, face to face, bosom to bosom, heart to heart. A feeling of surreality persisted, this woman was a legend, after all! I have been a feminist my whole life because of Gloria. I followed her through newspapers long before twits tweeted. Now here she stood before me, the leader of the tribe, waiting to be uplifted, by me.
“I have to say again, what an honor this is for me. I have been inspired by you since I was a girl. Thank You for all you’ve done for women. Bra Tenders wouldn’t have been possible without you! How did you hear about us?”
What would my life have been like if not for her work? What if I had no options?
“A friend of mine was here and said this is THE place to come bra shopping. She said you are the best in the business, so here I am.” I felt warm from head to toe and my cheeks flushed. It dawned on me that Gloria and I are colleagues, sort of, both uplifters and defenders of women. Maybe I wasn’t as out of my league as I thought.
And that’s the funny thing about self esteem. When you see it in someone else, you recognize it as a reflection of yourself. In that moment with Gloria, I felt a surge of empowerment and confidence for the first time in my life. I had mastered something, and was acknowledged for it, known for that mastery. I took an amazing leap in my growth that day, and I saw possibility all around. A major mindset shift. Here I was, 52 years old, and for the first time in my life, I finally felt like an accomplished woman who was worthy of recognition.
“Well thank you, and our thanks to your friend. I must say, feminist bra burnings were the worst thing that ever happened to the bra business! I have customers now, women in their 60’s, who haven’t worn a bra since then. They say being liberated from the torture contraptions was the best thing that ever happened to them. Makes it hard to do my job sometimes!”
“You know, there were never any bra burnings. No burning of any kind.”
“Well do tell. But first, can you take off your sweater please? Let’s see how your girls are doing.” She removed her sweater and placed it on the back of a chair beneath the window. Gloria Steinem -naked in my fitting room. If I dropped dead at that moment, I would have died contentedly. “Ok, let’s see.”
I checked out her bra, pulling the band to test the life of the elastic. The band was too big, not giving her enough support around the rib cage. The straps looked to be in the right place, but she seemed a little droopy. She needed a little more lift, more structure in the cup than the flimsy, stretchy bra she wore provided. She was in excellent shape, clearly had taken good care of herself. Her stomach was flat, posture erect, hair still coiffed in her signature, parted in the middle style.
“I think we need to go down a band size. Cup size looks OK. Maybe it’s just time for an update. I’m impressed. Most women who come in here are so far off on their size! This bra though, should be burned. Anyway, please tell me about how the bra burning rumors started. I lived through that era and believed it until you just disillusioned me!”
“The burning of feminine items was supposed to be a symbolic statement. It started with a demonstration outside the Miss America pageant on the boardwalk in Atlantic City in 1968. They were protesting the Degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie Symbol. At the time beauty pageants were one of the biggest sources of college scholarships for women, so many young women degraded themselves in these contests just to have access to the funding.
“The protest organizers asked women to bring stereotypical feminine items - hair curlers, steno pads, lipstick, false eyelashes, aprons, mops and brooms, pots and pans, bras - to burn in a “freedom trash can.” The symbolic burning stood as a critique of the modern beauty culture, of valuing women for their looks instead of their whole self. A reporter covering the event drew an analogy between the feminist protesters, and the Vietnam draft card burning protesters. The bra-burning trope became a catchphrase of the feminist movement, even though it was incorrect. As you mentioned, it persists today!”
“Huh, that’s fascinating.” I unhooked her dead bra, and held it up, nodded at the plastic orange trash can already containing a few other bras. She chuffed politely. I handed her a soft cotton robe, and stepped in front of her as my brain rifled through its rolodex for the best style to show her. “Please put on the robe and I’ll bring some bras. But first, please finish your story.”
“The fire department wouldn’t issue a permit to burn anything because it was hazardous to do on the boardwalk. But inside the convention center, a large Women’s Liberation banner was unfurled, and that was broadcast around the world, really thrusting the movement into the spotlight.”
I remembered a time in the 70’s when men I dated used to say ‘I like you for your mind.’ I can’t tell you how many times in my life a guy looked at me and told what pretty eyes I had, all the while staring at my chest. But isn’t feminism about dissolving the patriarchal stereotypes about men too? Didn’t the movement seek to have men get in touch with their softer sides?
I said, “Personally, I think it’s women who are going to save humanity. It’s time for matriarchy to rule. We’ve seen how men handle things - pretty soon there won’t be anything to left to blow up. That’s why I do what I do. Confident women can kick some ass.”
“Yes, feminism believes in social justice and equality for all. Unfortunately, on the quest for equality, women began to compete with men. The point we wanted to make was that women are equally able as men and deserve equal pay for equal work. Except in matters of physical strength, women can do anything men can do.”
“You know, I think if men had to put on a bra and pantyhose every morning, the world would come to a screeching halt!
She gave a small laugh. “Now, what do you think I need?”
“Give me a few minutes to pull some styles I think you’ll like.” I exited the fitting room, and closed the drape behind me as I headed into the stockroom.
I dug through boxes, and riffled through racks until I had what I wanted, and headed back into the fitting room. We tried several styles, and she chose two bras she liked. I felt unusually triumphant knowing that my instincts were spot on, even with a legend.
Whenever we work with celebrities I like to get their autographs on a piece of intimate apparel. From men on Broadway, and in movies, we have a collection of signed t-shirts; from women, signed camisoles. We’re kind of like the Hard Rock Cafe of underwear.
“Gloria, I’m so happy we were able to give you an Uplifting Experience. I hope you feel as good as you look! Would you please autograph this for me?” I handed her a white nylon cami. She wrote, “Thank You for this great women’s space.”
]]>Liza’s dresser, Helen Tarr, who had been Judy Garland’s dresser and friend, stitched Hanes Alive support hose to the bra, “frankensteining” them to create a body smoothing undergarment that disappeared beneath the diva’s clothes. She bought them at Saks, and introduced to me the brand Lily of France, who manufactured Glossies. She preferred to spend the money at S$S, knowing that Joel had 4 young daughters, and needed an upgrade of the family station wagon.
Glossies came in a multitude of fashion colors every season, and as a young, 34D myself, this bra was a world apart from the Playtex contraptions I knew and hated. I spent a good chunk of my paycheck buying more colors of bras for myself. Sami would often make me sheer outfits, under which I had the perfect color bra. The tan colored glossies became invisible, and disappeared altogether, under the vintage dresses I combed the flea markets for, and loved to wear. I had several cheap dresses that Sami embellished with rhinestones, or fringe, or sequins or jet beads, turning my flea market find into a one of a kind couture garment.
At S$S, we offered a discount on Glossies, and it became an instant bestseller. Wardrobe supervisors loved the way the Glossies thongs worked under costumes, too. And that it came in a deeper nude color was off the charts revolutionary for those days.
S$S was on its way to becoming one of those “Secret New York Finds.”
I became good friends with the sales rep from that company, though in today’s climate, his behavior would be considered over the line. Joel was a prude, but when Arnie was around, ogling and salivating over my ripe young melons, making suggestive remarks, Joel turned red. And I admit, as a 22 year old who had lost her father young, I was attracted to older, daddy types, and flirted pretty good myself. And I wasn’t saying no to anyone who’d pay for the drinks after work.
I had figured out that my life was easier when I played the role, and played along, and hey, it was good for business, and good for me. At the end of each season, as colors were discontinued and sold off price, Arnie would send me whatever colors he had in my size, gratis, salesman’s samples.
Even though I was staunchly feminist, a girl needs to eat and pay rent. If flirting meant I didn’t have to spend my paycheck on underwear, I considered it a win. My sisters and I had terrible, knock down, drag out fights over panties in our household as budding young teens from 12-16. It would be a welcome relief to put underwear drama behind me once and for all!
At first I thought it was embarrassment that flushed Joel’s fat face, and perhaps it was. But in time, Joel didn’t like when people spoke about, or to me, suggestively, and by people I mean men. Let’s face it, I was young, traffic-stopping-stunning and hot without trying, and worked on a block full of businesses owned by bored, middle aged men, most long-married husbands with those same Roman hands and Russian fingers of men half their ages.
No, Joel’s face now reddened because he got angry when other people spoke that way, it made him furious. Joel had a secret. He told everyone he loved me like a daughter, but when he stood too close to me, he stopped breathing. When he greeted me in the morning with a fatherly hug, he trembled, and his penis rose to the occasion beneath his ill fitting pleated khakis. I could feel his heart hammering inside his poor befuddled body.
I was learning about life, myself, and navigating my power. As Sami liked to remind me, I had the power of the pussy.
Did I want that? I wanted to succeed on my merits, not my body parts. I wanted to be acknowledged and loved for my intelligence and sparkling wit. Was that even possible for this college dropout?
Helen Tarr succumbed to lung cancer, and time marched on. Liza’s numerous assistants continued to place orders for bras and hose whenever Liza needed to stock up, or changed sizes, which happened often. She changed assistants as often as her underwear too.
When I learned the manufacturer would discontinue the bra, in the early 90’s, I phoned Liza’s office to advise her of the latest development. Her assistant, in a near panic, called back and ordered twelve thousand dollars worth of Glossies. Because Liza’s weight fluctuated so drastically, they ordered dozens of the bras in 3 colors, in 3 band sizes, and 3 cup sizes.
I Felt enormous satisfaction making that sale, I felt validated. I was proud to help such a celebrity stay well stocked and supported, while proving to Joel that I did indeed have the Right Stuff for that partnership he’d been dangling for way too long. $12000 was the biggest sale in the store’s history.
The check came in the mail about three weeks after we delivered the bras, and Joel looked happy as a pig in shit.
“That was a good sale. Good work!” he told me.
“It would be nice if you put your money where your mouth is once in a while,” I quipped. “How about a little green thank you. Ever hear of commission?”
He shuffled his feet like a small boy. “Oh alright” and removed a wad of cash from his front pocket, peeling off a twenty, saying, “Have lunch on me.”
Joel strutted up and down 50th Street like a peacock, flaunting his jackpot to his pals who owned the other retail shops on the block. The owner of the cosmetic store across the street, a loud, obnoxious, Arab Jew, as he called himself, came by the store to congratulate me, as did the deli owner, and Joel’s brother Bobby, who worked at one of the bait and switch “luxury” goods stores peppered around Times Square, the ones that sold bronze elephants, marble statues of Achilles, knock offs of Rolexes and faux Louis Vuitton luggage. The tall, Greek, short order cook at the deli, who was handsome in a skeevy kind of way, kept asking, “you wanna make fucky with me?”
The 50th street grapevine was all atwitter. Joe’s girl done good. Asher, the hot tempered, passionate, Persian Jew who owned the shoe store asked, “So Gordo, how much commission you pay to Lori?” Though Persian by birth, Asher spoke 6 languages, often several in one conversation, and had a thick Israeli accent. He had thick black hair, a black unibrow, and intelligent hazel eyes. He’d served as a gunner in the Israeli army as a younger man. And even though Istanbul was Constantinople, Asher was Persian first, Israeli second.
When Joel explained he bought me lunch, Asher laughed. “You’re a chazer, Gordo. Give her five hundred, a thousand dollar!” He slapped Joel across the back, “Kos Omak”. (Literal translation, your mother’s pussy, in Arabic) “You love money more than you love your wife!”
When I was a relative newcomer to 50th street, I was flat broke and living on my own, and I was earning 150 a week with Joel. Asher and I had gone to Plato’s Retreat together a few times, where we’d sit in the pool, snort coke, smoke hash, sniff poppers, drink vodka in plastic tumblers, and wander around watching chains of people joined by various orafci and protuberances. When I was stoned enough, I’d blow him, as we had agreed, and he’d give me a few hundred bucks. So now I was a sex worker too. Oh joy.
Hey, desperate times called for desperate measures. I had no savings and needed a root canal. A few years earlier, I traded blow jobs for dental work because my mother couldn’t afford to fix my teeth and told me so. I’m not proud of it, but if you’ve ever had an abscess in a tooth, you’d understand that I’d do anything to make that pain stop. I sat in a closet and cried for 2 days because I had the misfortune of getting a toothache on the weekend.
Let’s say that Joel’s penny pinching and lack of appreciation was the beginning of the end of life at S&S for me. The pettiness and thanklessness disgusted me. It was around then that I started to Vision into Being, Bra Tenders. Every night I went home and journaled about how I would do it better, and I knew Bra Tenders was the only name it could have.
Fast forward to 2002, and Bra Tenders is now located in a small space at 400 West 42nd street, on the 2nd floor of an oddly configured building, above a pizza place on the corner, and a photo processing, photo booth sized store adjacent the entrance. We were across the street from Manhattan Plaza, the West Bank Cafe, Joe Scafatti the tailor, who made many suits and specialty garments for Broadway, and Citibank on the northwest corner. Theater Row had not yet been constructed.
Our wardrobe supervisor friend Robert Guy was working on a reality show with, of all people, David Gest and his wife. Robert was helping to style the couple for the show, and while he was searching through Liza's closets for outfits, he was astounded to find hundreds of brand new bras with the tags still on them, bags and bags and bags of bras, in 3 colors, and every bra size in existence.
They were all going in the trash.
April 24, 2016
By ALI CUDBY
“Her bra could be better.”
Instead of focusing completely on the legendary Patti LuPone’s Rose’s Turn finale, that’s what Lori Kaplan, owner of New York City’s Bra*Tenders, was thinking as she watched a dress rehearsal of Gypsy.
Fortunately for Lori, Bra*Tenders has been serving Broadway’s undergarment needs for years. She was at the theater to see Gypsy as a professional, not a tourist. It was easy enough to get a note to the Costume Designer with a suggestion to swap out LuPone’s bra. The response was that, “a design decision had already been selected for LuPone’s wardrobe, but if [Kaplan] wanted to send one as a gift, they would pass it along.”
Kaplan took them up on the offer and sent over a bra, gratis. LuPone tried the gifted bra – and loved it. She sent back an autographed photo inscribed, “Boy do you guys really know your boobs.” Better yet, she remains a loyal Bra*Tenders customer to this day.
When a woman comes into a retail environment to buy a bra, it’s easy and natural to help her – that is, after all, the job.
Things get a little trickier outside a store. When you see a woman who could really benefit from a fitting, what’s the best way to share your knowledge professionally and empathetically?
Oftentimes it’s not easy to tell a woman she needs a new bra. It’s a very personal conversation, and even the idea that you noticed suggests you were looking at her breasts – which some women find offensive.
Beyond that, telling a woman her breasts are noticeably ill-fitted can have the opposite effect vs. what a well-meaning fit professional intends. Instead of hearing an offer to help, for some women it can reinforce a belief that she is (or perhaps her breasts are) somehow flawed.
In the business of empowering women, there’s a fine line between offering to help and being invasive.
There are a wide range of options. In Lifetime’s TV show Double Divas, Livi Rae owner Molly Hopkins would routinely approach women directly to suggest they come in for a fitting. Now, that was for the TV cameras. Does Molly do that in real life? Maybe – Molly is fearless, and passionate about her mission.
Almost every lingerie professional I’ve met has gotten into the business to help women. As Kaplan says, “I’m really at my best when I’m helping other people be their best. When I’m in a crappy mood, I walk into the fitting room and help someone – and I feel better.”
Empowering women is a 24/7 job, and when done right, you can convert someone into a customer for life, just as Kaplan did with Patti LuPone. But it’s a delicate conversation.
Do you attempt that delicate conversation with women outside the retail space?
If so, how do you approach women with a message that’s focused on support, without being invasive or offensive?
]]>In 2500 BC, Greek woman on the isle of Crete started wearing a garment resembling a bra pushing their bare breasts up and out of their clothing. Then Roman woman squeezed their breasts into a breast band to minimize their busts and Egyptian women painted their breasts.
The corset had its origin in Italy, and was introduced by Catherine de Medici into France in the 1500s, where the women of the French court embraced it. This type of corset was a tight, elongated bodice that was worn underneath the clothing. The women of the French court saw this corset as “indispensable to the beauty of the female figure.”
By the middle of the sixteenth century, corsets were a commonly worn garment among European and British women. The garments gradually began to incorporate the use of a “busk,” a long, flat piece of whalebone or wood sewn into a casing on the corset in order to maintain its stiff shape. The front of the corset was typically covered by a “stomacher,” a stiff, V-shaped structure that was worn on the abdomen for decorative purposes. corsets stuck around until in the early 20th century.
In 1893 Marie Tucek patented the “Breast Supporter”. It had separate pockets for each breast, shoulder straps, and hooks and eyes.
In 1907 Vogue used the word brassiere from the French word upper arm.
In 1913 Mary Phelps Jacob came up with the idea of a bra-like garment to wear under a gown that was sheer. Taking two hankies, ribbon, and cord she devised a bra. And women started ordering these from her. In 1914 she patented her idea, and sold it to Warners Brothers Corset Company for $1,500.
Shortly after the United States’ entry into World War I in 1917, the U.S. War Industries Board asked women to stop buying corsets to free up metal for war production. This step liberated some 28,000 tons of metal, enough to build two battleships. The corset, which had been made using steel stays since the 1860s, further declined in popularity as women took to brassieres and girdles which also used less steel in their construction. However, body shaping undergarments were often called corsets and continued to be worn well into the 1920s.
In the 1920’s Ida and William Rosenthal forming the Maidenform Company.
In 1925, Chanel introduced her iconic Chanel suit with collarless jacket and well-fitted skirt. Her designs borrowed elements of men’s wear, and emphasized comfort over the constraints of then-popular fashions. She helped women say goodbye to the days of corsets and other confining garments.
Howard Hughes used his aeronautical skills to design a bra for very well endowed actress Jane Russell, making her an overnight sensation.
The 1930’s saw the shortening of the word brassiere to bra.
The 1940’s developed with added padding to the cups.
With the 1950’s came the design of the bullet bra.
In the late 1960’s, many women symbolically burned their bras in protest against patriarchy, in support of women’s equality. It was considered an act of liberation.
Underwear has been historically used to shape the female body into the ‘appropriate’ silhouette of various eras, to encase or enhance parts of the female body to signify gender distinction. Underwear’s intimate proximity to the body has made it a marker of social and cultural distinctions.
Some of the first indications of underwear being linked to either class or gender distinctions goes back to the medieval times; however, since then, women’s underwear changed in design and function, in parallel to changes in outwear and fashion overall. These changes followed larger social changes in women’s lives, for example the use of the Victorian corset which was unnaturally tight in order to distinguish middle-class women from working-class women and denote lack of manual labour for the former (which is nowadays also worn as outwear), or women riding bicycles in the early twentieth century which necessitated much simpler underwear, or the emergence of mass produced underwear with new material like nylon that made underwear cheaper.
]]>I had a crappy retail job in a schlock store at 156 west 50th Street in the late 1970’s. Woolworths was next door, and Capezio was above Woolworths on 7th Avenue. Tour busses would park on that street, and discharge tourists going to Radio City Music Hall, Broadway, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, shopping on 5th Avenue. There was a steady flow of bargain hunters, and my boss was the king of closeouts 50 years before it became a thing.
]]>I had a crappy retail job in a schlock store at 156 west 50th Street in the late 1970’s. Woolworths was next door, and Capezio was above Woolworths on 7th Avenue. Tour busses would park on that street, and discharge tourists going to Radio City Music Hall, Broadway, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, shopping on 5th Avenue. There was a steady flow of bargain hunters, and my boss was the king of closeouts 50 years before it became a thing. Also, the ballet bun heads who couldn’t afford Capezio leotards, attacked the cheap, second quality leotards that he sold 2/$5. They’d park on the floor for hours, and open every package stored in2 cardboard cartons just to buy 2, and left a mess of packaging that needed to be reassembled. I knew schlock, the behavior of schlock seekers was not for me.
Because of our location, wardrobe and costume folks stopped in regularly to see if perhaps Joel had received a treasure in his weekly shipment of hosiery. Once in a while we’d get a box with 2 out of 20 dozen pairs of pantyhose that were in a nude color, and size C or D. We tended to get a lot of navy petite and grey xtall. The hose were irregulars or seconds, and cost a fraction of the suggested retail price of first quality. The spiel, when asked what made things irregular, was “nothing that affects the look, wear or fit of the item.” Sometimes it was a missed stitch in the waistband, or there were significant variations of the dye lots, and for the most part, they were a smart, economical purchase for women who needed to wear pantyhose everyday. For the theater, though, we needed tights that were consistently available.
Helen Tarr was Liza Minnelli’s personal dresser, had been Judy’s, too. She and I developed a rapport, and she’d ask for things she needed, which Joel never responded to. Can you imagine telling the woman who was a personal shopper for the world’s most famous entertainer that something was too expensive for her? I, however, was determined to get the Hanes Alive sheer to waist support hose style 811, in Liza’s colors: Barely There, Little Color, and Black. She stitched the tights to Liza with a Z’s bras to make a body smoothing undergarment, long before Spanx billionaire Sarah Blakely was born!
I also met Alyce Gilbert, who was working on a Chorus Line, and she needed sheer-to-waist, extra long support hose in several skintones too. I knew we couldn’t depend on the closeouts, and started to source options for this. Little did I know this would become my lifework, and I’d become the Sourceress for Broadway.
I discovered that I had a talent for being able to look at someone and know their bra size. I became the buyer for the store, and we had a major expansion 2 years after I started work there. Bill from Eaves Brookes costumes stopped in to shop on Saturday mornings, he was such a jovial drunk. I met Irene Bunis on Sugar Babies, supplied the daytime soaps with oodles of pantyhose every week.
We expanded again, and I stayed at that job, training to be the Fairy Bra Mother, for 20 years. Then, enough became enough, and I left, starting Bra Tenders.
I started the biz with my now ex husband, 20 years ago. It was just us 2 in the beginning, and my first customer post S&S was the film A Beautiful Mind. bullet bras. Girdles. Bobby socks. White Cotton granny panties. Then in quick succession, calls from Doug Pettijean working on The Producers, Nancy Palmitier and Jenn Halpern, Debbie Cherutin, 42nd Street, Thoroughly Modern Millie. David Woolard and Robert Guy, Rocky Horror Picture Show. Had a funny not funny incident with WIL because of the now ex husband, but that’s for another day.
We moved to a small space on the second floor at 400 west 42 st, and Bra Tenders started growing. We hired one employee. Then, a few months later, Saks called, asking if they could send their brides to us. Subsequently, 6 months after my departure, S &S went out of business, and I hired 2 of the women who worked there. We moved into our current location in the film center building in 2003, and before Covid, had 7 employees serving Broadway, tours, regionals, Hollywood, TV, fashion shows, stylists, opera and dance companies, cruise ships and theme parks.
We carried undergarments to Philadelphia for La Streisand, and was invited to an insider only rehearsal for her first tour in 20 years, shortly after 9/11. A friendly audience was there to support her and help assuage her stage fright. 200 of us sat in the 50,000 seat arena, she even quipped: “you’re all here for free, and tomorrow night this place will be sold out to 50,000 paying customers!” There were some costume disasters, and she wouldn’t look at the underwear. I got to sit close enough to see her manicure, and she took turns on stage with Il Divo, who was awful, but filled the space when La Diva needed a break, or costume change, or whatever. The performances lasted for 4 hours. She did a routine about George Bush that many folks in ensuing performances were offended by, and this audience found hilarious.
Susan Sarandon was rude during her fitting and would not wear the size that fit her because she knew best.
Bette Midler had a custom undergarment made by one of the costume shops, and also liked a particular goddess 689 strapless longline bra when she didn’t want to be so confined. She bought that bra when I worked at S&S, and even though she had slimmed down, she liked to wear the same old, big bra, in the same 36DD size, even though the size that fit perfectly was 32F. She yelled at, and harangued me about plastic waste and the destruction to the environment after a fitting because of the plastic hangers bras are hung from.
Gloria Estefan had such an Uplifting Experience, she brought her whole family shopping. I helped turn John Glover into an aging drag queen. We printed tights for The Wickeds, supplied the Hamilsox, the Chicago fishnets, and black bras and underwear. Last year We sent Beyoncé’s costume shop 48 pieces of one bra style that worked particularly well for her. Found the perfect socks for Liev SChreiber’s Ricky Roma. Jimmy Smits came to Bra Tenders to meet me and kissed my hand, swoon. Lin Manuel’s wife Vanessa is my customer. Mrs. Lauder, the matriarch, is a customer.
We worked with 6 Saudi Princesses, and their bodyguards had to secure the building perimeter, elevators, hallways, and yes, our shop, looking under furniture and in our one closet, to ensure the safety of the royals. The woman in charge kept the male muscle on a tight leash, and her hand near her holstered weapon.
Gloria Steinem, my role model, who convinced my generation to “burn our bras” came to me for a bra fitting.
I couldn’t have imagined this life, but I am the best at what I do, and I care about the people I serve. I see history through the shape of the cups of brassieres.
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To all our bra wearing friends! When you discard one you no longer want please remove the eye closures from the fasteners for us! We use them to mend our turtle shells! They can be sent to Wildthunder wars 2584 Henley Ave. Independence IA 50644 Thank you!!
Credit: Nohline Sharp L’Ecuyer
]]>Heres to all the children who were able to rise above
Heres to all survivors, and those who don’t quit
who find the will and the way to persist
who still love, and have learned to resist
the pull, and the call of those who dismissed
who wake every day with inquiring minds
who live with purpose, not knowing what they’ll find
who stumble and sometimes fall behind
and get right back up, keep grinding the grind
heres to writers, who need to express
whats in their hearts when they’re a bloody mess
And, if like me, you hate fake holidays
keep kindness in your heart every single day
I’m nobody’s mother, and happy to be
for motherhood was never for me.
]]>We sold a fair amount of these novelties, basically fruit leathers made of sugar and pectin cut into the shape of a triangle bra and bikini panty. As far as I could tell, both the men’s and women’s bottoms looked identical, even though the photo on the blue box had a clear differentiation. We sold between 30 and 50 pair of edibles on Cupid’s day, along with dozens of fishnet stockings and black garter belts, and another fave, crotchless panties.
“Sure. Which flavor? Cherry, or chocolate cherry?” I asked.
“Gimme cherry.” He paid me eight dollars in cash and put the square box into an inside pocket of his coat, and whistled his way out the door.
The next day, again right before closing, the pasty faced man returned. He stood before me and reached into the trench coat pocket and tossed the same box of panties he’d bought yesterday onto the counter. The plastic wrapping had been torn off, and the box had been opened.
“I want a refund,” he said gruffly.
“I’m sorry sir, that item is final sale. I can’t give you a refund.”
“The damn thing is no good,” he said.
“What seems to be the trouble?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“They melted. My wife wore them to work and they melted.”
]]>We who are privileged do not have to worry about something as mundane as filing our nails because a quick, cheap manicure is easily accessible in the city and throughout the boroughs. When you’re homeless, you’re lucky if you can find the privacy of an enclosed toilet so you can take care of your daily business. Most of us can’t quite fathom the loss of dignity that accompanies homelessness, and the deprivation and inability to meet basic human needs like shelter, food, clothing. We take many things for granted. I was very moved by the plight of these women, many of whom had young daughters, and wanted to help them.
I decided to have a Bra Mitzvah celebration for the girls living at the shelter. In Judaism, a Bar or Bat Mitzvah takes place when a boy or girl transitions from childhood to adulthood, thirteen years old for boys, and 15 for girls. “Today you are a man!” beams the proud papa. “Welcome to Womanhood!” proclaims the Mom gently. For girls, certainly the first bra fitting is a rite of passage, hence Bra Mitzvah. But these girls, and their families, were bereft of resources, and there were no celebrations or welcoming rituals in their lives. I wanted to celebrate these girls, to pump up their self esteem, self respect, to reassure them that having a goal or a dream to work toward in life was important, was possible, and worthy of their efforts. I told them that I’d gone back to school at 30, and started Bra Tenders, when I was 45!
They arrived at the shop as a silent cluster, accompanied by, and clinging to, their chaperone. At first they were hesitant to speak, overwhelmed by the walls and racks filled with bras, but after a brief discussion, and a few very vocal, very busty 12 year olds, they all chimed in, many expressing frustration and self consciousness over their budding breasts. After introductions, I helped each girl find the perfect size, and best bra for her body, then gave them each 2 bras. Several of 10-12 year olds already had womanly curves, and wore E, F, and G cups. The new bras supported and lifted them, contained their breasts so their clothes fit better and looked neater. They talked of unwanted attention from men, and I remembered my own mortification when I was 13, and how I hated when boys, men, stared at my chest. I wore oversized clothes, and slouched, to hide my breasts. I wanted these girls to feel empowered, and to accept their bodies without shame or criticism.
I can’t describe the looks on their faces when they saw themselves in their new bras – smiles from ear to ear. They looked at themselves as if something magical had just happened, and I suppose that’s what I like best about doing this work – that look on women’s faces when they feel good about how they look, and how they look makes them feel good. We toasted the girls with iced tea and cookies, and some were so excited, they proclaimed their intention to work for Bra Tenders when they were a little older.
What they got:
Freya Sport 4002
Maidenform basic T shirt bra
Wacoal Halo Lace wired bra
]]>T-shirt/everyday bra is the one you instinctively reach for upon dressing. It’s the one that disappears under your silk blouses and fitted t-shirts/tops and is completely invisible. Favorites at Bra Tenders include: Wacoal La Femme, a molded demi cup bra available from A-G in black and nude; Fantasie 4510 Smoothing demi for full busted gals; Natori Feathers, a plunge front, lace trimmed, lightly lined cup to a G; Chantelle 1241 Invisible Memory Foam, low coverage demi cup up to DD.
You should have 2 nude and 2 black of your basic everyday bra. If you find a style you absolutely love, consider buying 6 in whichever color you use most. That way, when the bra becomes discontinued (as is eventual with most bras over time) you will have a stash to keep you covered. I buy 6 nude and 6 black of my favorite bra, and keep 2 of each in rotation. When they are shot, I toss them without remorse knowing that I’ve got more to rotate. Yes, it’s an investment, but if we’re not worth investing in ourselves, who, or what is?
Sports bra with adequate support for the type of fitness regimen you have. High impact bra required for high impact sports and activities. Medium support for yoga, Pilates, or activities that don’t involve a lot of jumping, running, full body contact. If you are full busted, look for bras that encapsulate each breast individually and don’t give you Uniboob. The more times each week you work out, the more bras you will need in your rotation. You can wear your bra 1-3 times before washing. Obviously, if you’re drenched at the end of the workout, you’ll want to give your bra a bath.
Fill the sink with water and a mild soap — we like Forever New for its elastic preserving polymers, but anything you’d wash baby clothes with is perfectly OK. Rinse your bra during your shower, and then air dry.
Bra Tenders top Sports Bras are Fantasie 4002 and 4004 for full busts, and Natori Zen and Fantasie Freestyle for yoga, pilates and stretching.
Find a strapless that defies gravity and holds your girls aloft. Once you put that bra on, just like your other bras, you should forget about it. I can’t tell you how many events I’ve attended where the majority of the women wore strapless attire and spent the evening tugging at or adjusting their bras. This is across the board on sizes, but especially for fuller busted women. This is an indication the bra is the wrong size, the wrong type, or both.
And don’t forget, strapless fashion is a great idea that does not work for everyone. Bra Tenders stocks 3-5 strapless bras up to a G cup that provide the lift, support and comfort of every great bra. However, because of a little thing called physics, backless bras beyond a G don’t exist. If you remove all the structures of support from the garment — sides, back — there is no way to boost the bust.
The one thing you can do that will save hours of frustration and time is have a bra fitting before you shop for your seasonal wardrobe. Have your eye on a cute little strappy top? See what’s available in your bra size that will enhance the look of the top. Unless your breasts are still firm, high and perky, without a bra, with boobs near your belly, the sex appeal of the top droops.
Best selling strapless from D-G: Fantasie 4530 Smoothing strapless which provides incredible lift and support; Wacoal Red carpet strapless; Freya Deco strapless; Prima Donna Divine strapless. For A- D cups, Le Mystere Sculptural strapless; Calvin Klein F3493.
Just as we should each have the ubiquitous Little Black Dress as part of wardrobe preparedness, so, too do we need a Little Black Bra. Maybe you like to feel flirty and feminine all the time, and don’t mind the seams and texture of lace under your clothes, and wear lacy bras all the time. In my 40 years experience, I’ve met fewer than a dozen women who wear a “fancy” bra everyday. But there are times when we want to feel extra special or are heading straight from work to a date that could end with a little sudden exposure. It doesn’t require much to prepare when you have a sexy bra or two in your collection.
One of Bra Tenders’ best sellers is Simone Perele Wish Demi bra, a sheer and lace demi cup bra with a center seam for great lift. Options abound.
Bra manufacturers finally understood that women with larger breasts want to have the comfort of a non-wired bra, without the requisite drooping or sagging that typically happens when the wires are removed. Wires contain and shape the breasts, and some wire free options mush the boobs to the east and west and into the armpits. Most bralettes pull over the head and are stretchier than their more constructed and supportive cousins. Frequently called a “weekend” bra, bralettes give you the confidence of light support when you’re hanging out with the kids at home, having a casual brunch with friends, or if you are just uncomfortable not wearing a bra. Our customers love Freya Fancies.
]]>As I reached into my bra drawer the other day, it occurred to me that this is a great time to go through all my drawers and closets, and clear out the old, and assess what my wardrobe needs are now.
In deciding what to keep and what to toss or donate, I consider a few factors.
Is the elastic still firm and stretchy throughout the bra: cups, sides, straps? Does the garment have overall integrity, or will one more tug of the straps turn them to dust? If the straps are already adjusted to their max, yet your boobs still seem to sit too low, it’s time to toss. Once the elastic is shot, the bra becomes useless.
One of the most common fit problems we see is that women buy the band of the bra too big, when what they really need is a fuller cup. It’s common that women who think they should be 36C are really 32DD. If this is the case, tightening the straps won’t improve the fit — it will just give you a pain in the neck! Solution: Get a bra fitting!
Our bodies change over time, and as we age, even without gaining or losing weight, our shape shifts. Most of the women I know, and me too, complain about a little extra weight around the middle, a bit more sagging of the skin, despite taut and toned muscles. Can I still close the band of the bra without it pinching, cutting, or creating bulges? Do the cups still accommodate my boobs? Is there gapping (never happened to me), or spilling? Does the bra create quadraboobs? If any of these things happen, the bra no longer fits. Time to toss or donate.
If your bra is shot, toss it. No, your housekeeper doesn’t want it. If it doesn’t do its job for you, what use is it to anyone else? If your bra is in good condition, but doesn’t fit you anymore, or you’ve just never worn the thing, think about donating it. Bra Tenders supports and is a drop off location for Free the Girls, a 501C3 nonprofit organization that recycles gently used and donated bras to girls and women in poverty-stricken countries to help them avoid sex slavery.
“By donating your new or gently used bras, you’re giving economic opportunity that these women use to change their lives. Your financial donation helps survivors of human trafficking start their own businesses selling bras in their local second-hand clothing markets while they recover and build their new life.”
The average Basic Bra Kit includes multiples of: T-shirt/everyday bra; strapless/convertible bra; sports bra; little black bra; leisure bra.
One of my favorite pieces is the Shapeez cami, which has a built-in, molded cup bra, a high back to banish bumps, and a gentle hug of shaping throughout the torso. It’s cut to sit at the high hip, so there’s no rolling. It’s a great piece to perfect the look of skinny clothes.
As long as I’m doing an underwear assessment… what’s happening in the panty drawer? I passed the age of thongs 10 years ago, so you’ll not find one in my underwear drawer. What you will find are Marie Jo laser cut briefs that are lightweight and comfortable, and fit my not-exactly drum tight ass, perfectly. I have a few pairs of lacy panties, because hey, you never know.
All your underwear should be clean, obviously. If it’s got holes, toss it. If you’re over 18 and it’s got Barbie on them, TOSS! What does the underwear in your drawer right now, say about you as a woman, and how you treat yourself?
Our needs change as we grow and change. The end of one year/beginning of the next is a good time to reflect on how we are, or are not, the same or different from the same time last year. True reflection of how life has progressed over 365 days provides great self-awareness and the impetus to act on our dreams. I am a different woman from the one I was same time last year and have accomplished several goals, with several others in progress. I will purge everything that no longer serves me, and nevertheless, persist.
]]>I don’t know how to stress this enough: If you are well endowed, and wear a bra size larger than DD, Go Shopping For Underwear Before You Go Shopping For The Dress.
Let me repeat that: Go Shopping For Underwear Before You Go Shopping For The Dress.
You can’t imagine how many times brides have walked in here expecting us to have some kind of miracle garment that will uplift the breasts, cinch the waist, and tame thigh jiggle, all without straps, back and supporting side structures, because the salesperson at the bridal salon told her, no problem, sure you can find a backless bra in 38J. Personally, I would never deign to tell someone what they could or couldn’t find at another business establishment, and I take umbrage at the fact that bridal consultants lie to their customers all the time in order to make the sale. This mythical garment does not exist.
If you consider an average D cup, which is on the small side in these times of food laced with growth hormones, weighs 4 pounds, you’d understand the reason that not one of the major bra manufacturer’s worldwide have been able to engineer a backless, strapless bra that will lift and support G cups or bigger. The laws of physics make it impossible to counteract the effects of motion and gravity to lift 6-10 pounds of flesh without the benefit of all the structures that encapsulate, lift and support the breasts.
I once received a photo from a potential customer of the dress she wanted to buy for her wedding. The model wearing said dress was 6 feet tall, 98 pounds, and flat chested, no boobs. The center front of the dress plunged to her navel, and the back draped all the way down her slender frame to her butt crack. The picture was annotated with “Do you have a bra that would work with this dress? I wear a 38K bra.” A photo of the customer was also attached. She was 5’3, 225 pounds, wore 38K, and had a short torso to boot. She was round, had a belly roll, and did not have the long, lithe body of the model in the photo. I responded that we did not have a garment that met the requirements of the dress. She replied, “you were my last hope.”
I was not pleased that we couldn’t help her, and wondered, is this dress really worth the emotional torture of trying to make it work?
I understand that many women have had an image of the fairytale wedding gown since they were 8 years old. And that’s fine as long as you are honest and realistic with yourself. Ask yourself, Will this dress look the same on me as on the model? Evaluate the model’s body, her height, weight, breast size, length of her arms, whether she has long legs or a long torso. Is she straight and skinny, or round and curvy? Is the model wearing any undergarments that you can detect? Compare the body in the photo to your body, and ask yourself, how will that dress look on my body? What are the features of the dress that appeal to you? Don’t be fooled by advertising or photoshopped images, and be honest!
If you’ve “never found a strapless bra that worked” in your size, and have avoided such fashion that required one, why would you choose, for the most important day of your life, to torture yourself with a dress for which no under structures exist?
I wholeheartedly believe that regardless of the size you are, your body is beautiful. I also believe that it is critical to be honest with ourselves about our bodies, and dress in styles that fit and flatter our shapes. It can be brutal to be honest with ourselves, but in the long run, it makes us wiser women.
Our power as women comes from us accepting who we are. And who we are not, and who we will never be. Self acceptance does not mean we have to love everything about ourselves. But that muffin top is part of what makes you, you. The jowls I’m developing as I age are my mother’s jowls, and they are now part of my aging profile. I don’t like it, but I accept it. What good could come from me fretting over or denying this? To do so would rob me of peace and contentment. Once we understand these things, we are empowered to release limiting ideas, and joyously be our true selves.
I am not my body. Neither are you. We are souls inhabiting these bodies. How boring would the world be if we all looked the same?
To feel good about yourself, and move in the world with confidence, maximize your assets and minimize the flaws. If you’re not sure about how to do that, or don’t know what looks good on you, ask a stylish friend, or even invest in a style consultant to help you choose your wardrobe wisely. Develop a personal style, experiment with different looks. Don’t follow trends, and forget the Kardashians — the extremes they go to are ridiculous and impractical. Is duct taping your breasts for lift, for a plunge down to there dress, and ripping your nipples off removing that tape, really worth it?
A proper fitting bra can help you look 10 pounds thinner, and 10 years younger in a New York minute. By lifting the breasts off the belly and repositioning them high on the chest, the torso looks longer and leaner. It’s important to wear a bra that centers your breasts, and doesn’t give you the dreaded “east-west” spread, which makes your body look wider. If you wear a DD cup or larger, this is especially important. Even and especially on your wedding day.
The wedding industry is a multi billion dollar per year business, and wedding gowns are a major expenditure in the overall wedding budget. When shopping for your dress, bring undergarments with you. They will change your shape and the way the dress falls on your body. Consider styles that allow you to feel confident and comfortable — a smile makes us extra beautiful.
Gowns with deep v-necks, or portrait necklines, are a better choice for very full busted women, opening up the face, neck and decollete. You will be able to wear a supportive bra, and shapewear if you want or choose to. Strapless bras are available to a G cup that do offer support, but they are not, and cannot be backless.
Fashion is about developing a personal sense of style — a particular shade of red lipstick for instance — and wearing clothes that fit you well so you can present your best self. You only get one chance to make a first impression — might as well make it a good one.
RECAP:
Bend slightly from the waist and allow breasts to gently fall into and fill the cups. Lift the breasts one at a time, from the bottom, and Swoop and Scoop them up and away from your armpits, into the center of the cups. Make sure that each breast is nestled in its own cup, and that nothing spills or bulges out the top of the cup, below the cups, or creates armpit bulges. If the bra has seams, nipples should be aligned with seam.
- If the cup is not filled out, it’s too big. If you get bubbles or quadraboobs, the cup is too small.
- The center bridge should sit flat against your breastbone. If it stands away, the cup is too small.
- The cup should sit in line with the crease of your armpit – that’s where the boobs begin.
- Hand wash if possible, otherwise use a lingerie bag and NO dryer. The heat eats the elastic.
- If the bra band is up between your shoulder blades, the band is either too big, or the shoulder straps are too tight.
- Bra should feel snug around your ribcage, and have enough space for two fingers to slip under the band without pinching. The elastic will stretch and relax with wash and wear. Fasten the bra on the loosest set of hooks to start. 90% of the support of the bra comes from the band being snug around the ribcage, parallel to the floor, in the same place, front and back.
- Get a bra check up every year to determine if your size has remained the same, or if changes to your body require a new size. A woman’s bra size changes about 6 times in her life due to weight loss or gain, pregnancy and breastfeeding, medication, exercise and physical activity.
- The most common problem we see with ill-fitting bras are band sizes that are too big and cups that are too small. Many full busted women aren’t aware that bras are available in small band sizes (28, 30, 32) with full cup sizes (D-JJ).
]]>People often ask me, “how’d you get into this business?” To which I reply, “It’s a long, convoluted story.” The short version is that I discovered an odd and uncanny talent for being able to look at a woman and know her bra size, and also which bra would be best for her figure, while working at a crappy retail job in a schlock store near Rockefeller Center. I was a 22-year-old college dropout, who also cut typing classes in high school and had no office skills. I fell into that job quite by chance and learned a lot about myself: who I am, who I am not, and who I’ll never be.
Because of our proximity to the theater district, wardrobe supervisors and costume designers periodically popped into the shop to see if we had anything they needed, which at the time, in the early to mid-1970’s, was sheer to the waist support pantyhose. Rudy Gernreich had introduced the first thong underwear then too. Each week, I heard new requests and researched sources for the products Broadway crews needed. Within 5 years, the business expanded for the first time. 5 years later, we expanded again. As our product mix became deeper and more diverse, we became a Go-To spot for tourists, and for women looking for solutions to wardrobe conundrums.
I was thrilled to be able to make a living, albeit a modest one, helping people. It’s never been about nickels, dimes or dollars for me; my success stems from my desire and drive to help people. The first time I fit a woman in the right bra and saw how her whole demeanor changed—how she went from “beat up to upbeat” (her words) — I knew I was on the right path.
I enjoy interacting with people, and I’m a curious, clever problem solver. Long before Spanx came along, I was cutting the legs off my control top pantyhose because the girdle was still good, and it smoothed out my butt under pants. When someone needed knee pads in a hurry for a performance piece, I suggested thick bust pads, which solved the problem. I listen well and hear people express their needs, and genuinely want to be part of the solution.
We live in a world where the personal touch is disappearing, and that’s a shame. We need to be connected, to be conscious and aware of, and in touch with each other. Perhaps it’s a great convenience to walk down the street and shop with a click, but what’s the cost of being disconnected from other people? Do we consider the people who work long hours in less than stellar conditions for a pittance, the people we don’t connect with when we click to buy? I don’t know about you, but when I go shopping and ask for help finding something, particularly in a large store, like Bed, Bath, Beyond, I need more than a disengaged employee pointing a finger in some far off direction.
Bra Tenders is built on relationships, and by contributing something positive and beneficial to the world. Our mission is to empower women to look and feel beautiful and confident so they can be their best selves out there in the world, where life can be harsh.
We continue to support the Broadway community, and larger entertainment realm of film, television, streaming services, stylists, and videos. It’s a privilege to be involved with kind and caring, creative and interesting theater folks. Where would we be without the escape provided by theater or other performing arts? It’s exciting to work beneath-the-behind- the-scenes and be part of creating magic.
Being socially responsible, active and engaged is one of my core values. We give back to our community in many ways. We support Dress for Success and are a drop off location where women donate bras to Free the Girls, a non-profit that works to protect and save girls from sex trafficking. We support Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS with our love and lingerie. During this tumultuous year, we donated 5 cases of underwear to Houston after Dr. Brene Brown issued a plea, saying clean underwear is a big dignity issue. We made financial donations to Puerto Rico relief organizations and NoCal rescues. We support Muddy Paws animal rescue, the ASPCA, and World wildlife fund.
The staff at Bra Tenders consists of 7 women, including me. I hope to have them share some of their experiences from BraLaLand here. They are dedicated and valued team members, and each is devoted to the ideal of helping women love how they look and feel. Our customers deserve the star treatment, and we are fulfilled by providing just that.
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