Meet the bralette, the underwire bra’s kid sister. She’s a dainty little thing, all flimsy straps, lace, and minimal padding. After years of playing second fiddle, she’s finally enjoying some time in the limelight: displays at major retailers, articles about her growing influence. But watch out: This ingénue has her eye on snatching best supporting role from the overbearing hooks of the underwire bra.
The bralette is everywhere this spring. BuzzFeed recently ran a post called “18 Reasons You Should Ditch Your Bra for a Bralette.” Business Insider reported that Victoria’s Secret is betting big on bralettes, and my friends at Racked theorized that Kendall Jenner is a one-woman ambassador for the undergarment, single chestedly acclimating the world to the sight of the bralette in the wild.
So what exactly is this newfangled take on the over-the-shoulder boulder holder, and does it finally solve the age-old problem of having boobs? “A bralette is an unstructured bra. It’s usually unlined, unpadded, wire-free,” explained Cora Harrington, who founded and has run the website Lingerie Addict for eight years. (Some brands, like Journelle, favor the spelling bralet.) Bras without underwires are far from new, and in fact, Harrington pointed out that the earliest bras, in the 1920s and ’30s, were themselves bralettes by today’s standards. Still, with underwire and padding as ubiquitous as they are, an unstructured bra that doesn’t retain a 3-D shape when off the body can seem like a novel, even liberating, thing.