Hoorah for the Bra

It was in 1914 that Mary Phelps Jacob set women free — from the prison of the corset. With a little help from her lady's maid, this ingenious New York socialite stitched together two handkerchiefs and a long pink ribbon to fashion the world's first-ever brassiere. (Jacob later sold her patent for $1,500 — to a company that went on to make $15 million off her invention.) The rest, as they say, is history — a history that's amply, titillatingly documented by designer Cheree Berry in Hoorah for the Bra. The twenties' flat-chested flappers, the fifties' bullet-bosomed bombshells, the eye-gouging cones of Madonna's Blonde Ambition-tour bustier: this provocative pop-up book reveals it all. The straps and the cups. The underwire and the padding. The elastic and the Lycra. The demure pink satin and the racy midnight lace. Hoorah for the Bra tells a tale that doesn't sag and presents a cast of characters — mail-order moguls, sweater-clad movie stars, brassiere-torching women's-libbers — who never let you down. Sure to be a bust-out hit, the book's the perfect gift for any Wonderbra dreamer or Frederick's of Hollywood vamp.