Bring On The Bralettes

As women start heading back to work, the question emerges: can the bralettes we’ve become accustomed to be worn out as “proper” bras?

- Chelsea Tang

I take heart in knowing that us female millennials have a shared experience, in that none of us ever went through a “bralette phase” during adolescence when breast support first became an issue. I never once thought to question the undeniable (and inevitable) discomfort that comes from wearing the bra, not since my mother transitioned me from a cotton training bra to a “proper” wired, padded bra at 14. “It’s for support,” she told me, and I took the subtext of her words very seriously: to care for your breasts meant keeping them enveloped in the mould of a structured bra all the time.

Yes, that was what I did. And the thought that I wore a bra to bed every night is indeed shudder-inducing, even 12 years on. It wasn’t till a friend shared that the first thing she did when she reached home was to immediately remove hers that the thought even entered my head that I could do the same. I remember asking her, “Isn’t that… bad?” She was nonchalant about it, and told me, almost with a devil-may-care attitude, “I don’t know, and I don’t care. It’s so warm wearing it, and I’m home anyway.” We were 17.

Google wasn’t that big of a thing then — for context, I’m 26 this year — so I simply took her word, (backed by a certain rebelliousness) for it. So I would toggle between the two ends of the spectrum (bra or no bra) till at the age of 21, I found myself standing in the lingerie section of Primark at Oxford Street, London, marvelling at what would turn out to be a life-changing garment — the bralette.