Like many girls in Miss McAnally’s 6th grade class at Kenter Canyon Elementary School, I had the desire to be seen and wanted. We were starting to develop and some of us needed to wear bras. Sally Crammer, my desk partner, must have been a full B cup. I remember her wearing sleeveless blouses, the semi-circles of sweat stains and fuzzy tufts of dark hairs poking out of her armpits, like little furry animals.
Many of the girls, like Donna Fine and Ruthie Turney, were wearing bras when we returned from the summer vacation of 1960. I’m not sure they actually needed them, but they were definitely showing more than swollen nipples. Most likely their mothers took them shopping, to Bullocks Westwood or Henshey’s in Santa Monica, and bought them a couple of white “training bras” they could grow into.
At recess Brodie Greer and some of the other boys chased these girls, weaving through the handball courts and running in circles around the tether-ball poles. The girls squealed and giggled as the boys tried to grab the back of their cotton blouses and take hold of the sandwiched bra band and snap it. Snap! the game was won. I watched this adolescent foreplay from the sidelines, because I was still flat chested, and rather shy. It was like watching a movie about the game of desire on the playground.
I wanted to be desired too. I wanted to be worthy of attention. My mother got attention because she was famous and beautiful. Famous for being a designer of lingerie. Bras had no mysterious lure for me even when I was little. They were the mainstay of my parents’ business. But for any girl her first bra is special, a rite of passage, like her first period. The memory stays with her forever.
I remember my first bra. I still didn’t need one, but I’d graduated from sixth grade and was about to go to summer camp. Sitting at the yellow Formica kitchen table, my mother read me the camp’s clothing and supply list. “Let’s make you a bra,” she suggested.
How excited I was. The following week I was dropped off at my parent’s factory and I found my way into Mother’s design studio at the far end of the stretched-out building. The long room was filled with design tables, mannequins, and a collection of power machines: a couple of single-needles, a two-needle cover-stich, a zigzag, and a couple of safety overlocks. The sample makers were busy sewing. Mother wore soft blue leather slippers she kept under her worktable. Her hair was twisted up in a chignon. She wore a slim black skirt with a crisp white button-front blouse, and a yellow tape-measure draped around her neck.
Off in our private corner, the two of us stood at Mother’s work table which was neatly appointed with various metal straight edges, curved rulers, a mechanical pencil, a couple of erasers, a thick stack of fashion magazines, and pads of tracing paper. I wore seersucker shorts and a sleeveless summer top. Mother asked me to stand with my arms in a T as she deftly slipped the tape off her neck and wrapped it gently around my thin chest, then instructed me to remain straight while relaxing my arms down to my side. I loved the soft scent of her Channel No. 5 and the gentle touch of her cool, long fingers, tipped with glossy painted nails.
She took three measurements: lower chest (the under-bust measurement), across my nipples (the bra’s over-bust measurement), and a couple of inches above my nipples (the upper-chest measurement). Sliding the cloth from under my arms, she measured the distance between my nipples (apex to apex). She slipped the tape over my sloping shoulders for a strap measurement, then had me turn around so she could take a few back measurements.
With all the numbers recorded on her note pad, she scooted over a high stool next to her swivel chair. A ready student, a jumped up on the seat. Between us Mother placed a piece of blue grid-patterned paper on the corkboard surface. She placed a small jar of silver push pins in front of me and instructed me to place one at the corners of the paper. Transcribing her measurement notes into pencil dots on the grid lines, she instructed me on how to place the ruler between the marks and swipe the lead across the straight edge, dot to dot.
Then, she handed me the shiny protractor to encircle the shape of the bra cup. At age eleven, I found that one twist of the device was sufficient, its diameter was no wider than a small cookie. Some brassieres had more than eighteen separate pattern pieces, more than a man’s three-piece suit. But because my first bra served no other purpose than creating an illusion, my bra had but a few pieces to sew together.
Mother showed me how to hold the large, heavy scissors, balancing their weight by securing my elbow on the table.
“Try to open the scissors just enough to bite onto the paper, then slide the paper through the blades,” she said. Her steady hands guided me.
I remember how patient she was while I worked the pieces. I felt the others in the room smiling at my effort, which made me try all the harder.
After we finished cutting out the pattern, Mother passed on the pieces to Rosa, the sample maker, and gave her the simple sewing instructions. We then left her office and she drove me to Van Nuys airport for lunch. When we got back to the design room, Rosa had finished sewing up my bra, made from little pieces of French lace: two small doilies attached to stretchy side bands that hooked together in the back, tiny pink and green satin buds placed at the center front and at the top of the flat discs where the shoulder straps attached. The straps and back band were elasticized, and substantial enough to show under my blouse. That’s all I cared about but I didn’t let my mother know that.
At summer camp I got snapped in the back by a cute, lanky blond boy and it changed me. It was my first bite of romance, my first initiation into my femininity That first bra was more to me than a mere undergarment. It was my first experience with allure.
The First Lady of Underfashions is a nonfiction saga-like memoir written by Christina Erteszek and includes excerpts from her parents' unpublished memoirs. It is a complex, layered, and nuanced story that bridges the violence of war, the innovation of thought, the singularity of religion, the quest for identity, and the intrigues and intricacies of family life. Jan and Olga escape from World War II Europe and arrive in the US with just a few dollars. They turn their paltry savings into a multi-million-dollar fashion business. Olga becomes a leading patent holder of female lingerie, a trendsetter in the industry, and is widely known for her innovative business tactics. But as this husband-and-wife team think of retiring, they decide to merge with another fashion company, which proves to be a fatal move when a loophole in the agreement allows for a hostile takeover. This is also a story of a daughter's need to find herself. Along her path to self-discovery, she discovers her parents have many secrets, some of which will never be revealed.
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