How Corsets and Bras Have Helped Reinforce Beauty Standards Throughout History

08.09.2026, 18:29 allure.com

The inaugural season of Allure Perspectives will explore one of the most controversial and medically researched parts of a woman’s body: breasts. Through expert interviews, personal stories, and historical context, the podcast series, hosted by editor in chief Jessica Cruel, will examine how breasts intersect with beauty, health, identity, sexuality, and culture. In our second episode, Cruel talks with fashion historian Valerie Steele, PhD, about the cultural history of bras, corsets, and other undergarments. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes every week.

Breasts have always been “an issue in fashion,” Valerie Steele, PhD, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology and one of the leading experts on corsets, tells Allure editor-in-chief Jessica Cruel on the latest issue of the Perspectives podcast. “They are a part of the female anatomy, and you have to accommodate them in some way.”

Of course, it’s not only women who’ve worn supportive undergarments. “Men would sometimes wear corsets if they were riding horseback,” Dr. Steele says. “We see men at the gym today wearing what are effectively corsets when they’re lifting weights.” But the bra, in particular, has played a complicated role in women’s history: a symbol of feminine empowerment, a means for physical support, and a tool of the oppressor all at once.

In the second episode of Perspectives, Cruel and Dr. Steele explore those often-conflicting narratives around undergarments, how bra and corset design has changed with nearly every decade, and what they predict will come next.

“You can date corsets by the way they are shaped and made,” Dr. Steele says. There are hourglass corsets, barrel-shaped corsets, and corsets shaped “like an ice cream cone that pushed the breasts up.” Corset design changed often to emphasize each era’s standard of what an ideal body looked like. “They’re never just a functional thing,” she says. “They were always a part of idealizing the body according to that period and that culture’s sensibility and taste.”

Around 1900, the sein du jour was a “mono bosom … all kind of one big lump in front,” Dr. Steele says. In the 1920s and ‘30s, for example, “the ideal [breast] was small,” Dr. Steele says. “Most people didn’t live up to that ideal.” Flattener bras helped women of that time who wanted to reduce the appearance of their larger breasts. It’s no wonder, then, that the 2010s era of slim-thick idealization gave rise to modern-day corsets in the form of ultra stretchy shapewear.

It’s widely said that World War I had the biggest impact on changing bra design to be softer and more minimalist: Metal was to be used for the war efforts, not for boning in ladies’ undergarments, the rumor goes. But Dr. Steele says that’s not quite true. “One of the big influences, actually, was the tango,” she says. “You couldn’t bend backward in a boned corset…there’s no question that as women got more into sports they developed … corsets that were easier to wear.” And, OK, maybe the war was a bit to blame: As women entered the workforce while men were off fighting, they needed undergarments that would allow for a wider range of movement.

Nowadays, anyone can get a bra that at least looks fancy, but Dr. Steele isn’t convinced that our era of overconsumption is a great thing. “I’m afraid that mass production probably has just made us less aware of what [good bras are] supposed to look like,” she says. “It would be better to have three good bras than 30 mediocre bras.”

It’s why she wishes more people would invest in a well-fitting bra. “A custom bra would beat out even a sports bra [in comfort] because it would really be made just for you.” Dr. Steele recalls wearing a custom-made, 1880s-style corset to a party. “People kept saying ‘Isn’t that uncomfortable?’ And I said, ‘No, but my feet are killing me in high heels.’”

For more on the fascinating history of bras, corsets, and other undergarments—plus what Dr. Steele predicts will come next in lingerie technology—listen to the full episode below. (Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.)