The ECSTASY of Exposed Bra Straps
And cup trimmings. Plus, tank tops I love and Erin Brockovich forever.
I’ll be writing some cute things about lingerie today and then next week…stay tuned…I’m having a braissance…
I was watching Erin Brockovich (2000) the other day, and I was inspired. There was actress Julia Roberts playing the struggling mom and sassy legal assistant, with her humongous, messy locks of hair, holding her pouty toddler at the waist, her bra straps hanging out of a tank top. She was like a broke Botticelli vision with a cornucopia of cleavage spilling out of her sweetheart necklines; a bra whose little crescent slices of lace poked out of a low-scoop top. A leopard print iteration peekabooing from out of a vest. There was a lacy rose-red strap, firmly glued to the shoulder, miles away from the strap of the actual corseted tank top. Like Roberts as Brockovich, I love skimpy tank tops, especially the floss-thing spaghetti straps that look like they could snap at any moment or fall off the shoulder.
The Brockovich-bra look has come as a relief to me as I have started wearing bras again. This is after a zillion years of not wearing them, which has been liberating. In high school, wearing a bra was as if I were trying to prematurely stuff my way into womanhood. I’d strap myself into a TJ Maxx push-up contraption1 that looked like someone had pumped air into the cups and felt like two rock-hard boulders slapped onto my chest.
My bra habits changed when I started Vogue, and an editor (Jorden Bickham) simply told me to stop wearing them. I’ve always been flat, so what was the point? Since then, I have always gone sans bra no matter the occasion. Job interview. My actual corporate media desk job. My wedding. A funeral? It didn’t matter. Currently, I’m still the same size (a “two by four2,” as the guys in high school would say), but mentally, I cannot go braless again. I’ve had a baby, and things feel different. It’s not even about whether or not I need the physical lift—it’s that I certainly need the mental lift.
But no bra also means no more crisp air grazing the outskirts of an areola, no glimmer of naughty nip when I pick up a can of Progresso from the bottom shelf of Key Foods. There’s no more room for fun or what I have described as the “euphoria of a mammary-free fall”. Now, I feel constrained by the bra. There’s no room for tongue-flicking error. In a bra, everything is compact and contained. I’m in chest jail.
It doesn’t help that my bras are boring and puritanical. I rotate between two: a Victoria’s Secret push-up bra that gives me buoy breasts and could function as a lifesaving flotation device, and a sad, pallid tan one that’s drained of any color. These are the dregs of bras: one is like a steroid for your tits, and the other one is the color of Wonderbread crust.
But back to Roberts in Erin Brockovich. Not every bra has to have the hue of sand. Not every bra has to be so flagrantly boring. Recently I’ve been looking at colorful vintage bras, raging searing psycho-fab colors. Something that could keep me fab and hoisted and that I love to show to the world. There’s a peekaboo of a feather courtesy of La Perla. Spicy-virginal from ancient Calvin Klein. That red Brockovich-inspired strap, but in sunset orange. This fantastic floral-print Prada bra has the littlest sinister black bow sprouting on the center gore. For new ones, there is CouCou Intimates that adds a tiny kiss of a bow to the strap.
And as for that beautiful Aphrodite bra in the photo I led with…well, I’ll be writing about that next week.
Note: Bras talk is at an all-time high! Something…buoyant is in the water. Viv Chen just wrote a fantastic piece for Unsaid about colorful bra shopping. My friend Imani Randolph of Desire Paths test-drove a handful of pretty bras and wore them cool and exposed. May we all be connected by bra straps, no matter where we are.
Now, Tank Tops (I Wear 2 With the Bras)
What I Have: I wear my clothes until they have fused with my skin and they’ve picked up every fiber, scent, and skin cell. This might come off as gross, but if you’ve ever found a great silhouette of a piece, then you’ll understand: you become one with the shirt, or the jean, in this case, a simple tank top with a little bit of zest. I wore one of these 24/7 tanks for roughly six days last week. (I’d be wearing it today, but it’s in the wash.) This is the sort of tank you rip out of the plastic and don’t even bother to wash the chemicals off because it is that good. The one I bought was a J.Crew tank top with the tiniest beaded hems on the chest and straps. It’s like someone sprinkled these tiny beads on it. So nice. I also bought a matching one for my mother. This is what I like: a simple, standard silhouette with a little zhuzh. Tip: size down or get it tailored (I surprisingly wear an XS in lieu of a S with this one)! Also run, don’t walk…I feel like they will sell out soon.
What I Have: Another tank…this random white tank top from Gap that I’m wearing in the first photo. It reminds me of Madonna, for, well, the Gap in 2003 when she did that music video with Missy Elliot. This one has what I refer to as that saucy little “hot girl crop” which means that it doesn’t sit on the body like a crop top but rather, if you reach for something or raise your hand to say “hayyyy”, the tank will slip up and reveal a slice of midriff. Never overt: just a hint, just a whisper. This is the perfect white tank top.
What I Want: Speaking of tanks…does anyone sell Olga Joan in New York? I found this brand because of the Nymphet Alumni color design podcast, which mentioned me in relation to the Gap Chunky Turtleneck sweater, among other things. (Thank you, ladies!) They mention a horde of designers who love color, but someone commented on their Substack post: “What about Olga Joan?” I looked the brand up. I got excited. A zillion different cotton tanks in a zillion different saccharine hues. Also, the brand seems sweet, and she named it after her grans. It seems like I can throw into the local laundromat, on hot, maybe on hot. Except it costs $41 for shipping because they are in…Australia. Shipping costs make me feel like I’m spending money on an exhaling exhaust pipe.
What I’d Like: I have my eye on Ella Emhoff’s beaded tank top that she posted on Substack. It’s in the same vein as that J. Crew one, except she slathered delicate little beads all over it. Please produce this.
What I Have: Another tank top I bought is part of my Madonna collection. I went on the Vogue Run Through podcast a few weeks ago with my former bosses, British Vogue’s Chioma Nnadi and Vogue Runway’s Nicole Phelps. They asked me what I was buying recently, and I explained that it was basically Madonna merch. The best tank top I got was from Madge’s Kabbalah era. The graphic is of a trippy Shanti Madonna with “Madonna” written in Hebrew on the front. I’ve had three people send me the remaining ones on the internet, three different times… there's one left for a steep price!
What I Want: This CouCou tank top that I mysteriously do not have, even though I am a CouCou obsessive. But I know firsthand that this tank top is top tier. I just spent the weekend with my friend Mayan Toledano, who wore the dainty little white iteration all over town. It’s the best sort of cotton, nipple-poking thin yet sturdy… a sort of joyful classic summer tank top where you can feel the air whisper down your chest in that carefree, forever-young way. Now, let that wind blow.
A “2 by 4” is a piece of wood.
Cornucopia of cleavage” and chest jail is poetry!
Proof again that sexiness is a mindset and you can be sexy with your boobs out of a bra and you can be sexy with your boobs in one… and every other way in between. Dealer’s choice