Bras began to be seen boldly in Hollywood from the Sixties. This new visibility of the undergarment — and a bra isn’t a bikini, which is meant for display — symbolised in its wearers a sexual confidence and power.
At first, they were mostly white. Catherine Deneuve, lying on the bed with her back turned towards the screen, with Yves Saint Laurent as her wardrobe designer, donned an underwired white semi lace bra in Belle de Jour (1967) and wowed audiences as much as a Patty Duke in a white lace bra again in Valley of the Dolls the same year, or a Janet Leigh in a white cone bra (that later changed to black, to denote another moral state) a few years earlier in Psycho (1960).
The game-changer in this decade was the “cougar”, Mrs Robinson, seducing a young Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967 again). With her arched brows and sharp gaze looking into the camera, a cigarette dangling from her fingers, Ann Bancroft aced the introduction of a leopard print bra — set against the white linen of a hotel room — on the silver screen. It would take three decades for a leopard print bra to make an impact again. Mia Amber Davis’s Rhonda is remembered for her leopard print bra in the sex comedy Road Trip (2000), where she, too, is a seductress.
By the Seventies other colours had edged the white bra out and it went largely missing in the following decades, to be glimpsed significantly once much later on Margot Robbie in a low-cut see-through underwire white lace bra in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and in another instance that I leave for the last. Black ruled, with an occasional burgundy, blue and some nudes thrown in for effect.
One of the most impactful scenes in black lace has to be credited to Halle Berry in Swordfish (2001) with Ginger, her character, carrying both the black lace bra set and a pistol to great effect! Other black bra rockers include Elizabeth Berkeley as she pole dances in a black push-up bra in Showgirls (1995), a poignant Isabella Rossellini in solid black in Blue Velvet (1986), Jamie Lee Curtis in a black balconette in True Lies (1994), Scarlet Johansson with her stunning cleavage in black lace in Lucy (2014) and the wonder woman Gal Gadot in her high-necked lace black bra that supposedly sported a fifteen hundred dollar tag.
Contrary to market trends, red bras never really took off in films. Burgundy, blue and brown did better. Demi Moore as a femme fatale in nothing but a burgundy bra set, an ankle length fur coat and a gun in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003) is not a scene easily forgotten. Equally memorable is Salma Hayek dancing in a chocolate plunging number with a slithering hissing snake all over her in From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). As for blue, Pam Grier totally nailed it in electric blue satin in Foxy Brown (1974).
Who else but J. Lo should be seen in the nude lace underwire in Out of Sight (1998) and Mila Kunis in a full covered nude bra in Bad Moms (2016). Interestingly, Mila Kunis’s Amy is the only one to have worn a non-wired bra in this list since Janet Leigh in 1960. Wonder how bras will appear on screen in a post-Covid world, after living-in-non-wired bras era.
The one white bralette that I would have never expected is in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, (2010), sported by none other than Daniel Radcliffe himself upon his hairy chest, no less. But not as Harry Potter!
Bollywood remains a curious case. Heroines have worn bikinis and far less, but hardly ever a bra. Something at work there.
The columnist is the founder-CEO of Necessity-SwatiGautam, a customised brand of brassieres. Contact: necessityswatigautam@gmail.com
