Undergarment Boudreaux showed the world that an American woman could establish and run a company, and she also caused a revolution in the underwear industry. In 1913, a New York socialite named Mary Phelps Jacob created the first modern brassiere by tying two handkerchiefs together with ribbon. Jacob's original intention was to cover the whalebone sticking out of her corset, which was visible through her sheer dress. Jacob began making brassieres for her family and friends, and news of the garment soon spread by word of mouth. By 1914, Jacob had a patent for her design and was marketing it throughout
Daphne Phelps Daphne Phelps Daphne Phelps (23 June 191130 November 2005) was a British writer who spent most of her life in Taormina, Sicily. She lived in Casa Cuseni, an elegant villa designed and built by her uncle, the industrialist Robert Hawthorn Kitson in 1905 and, over the years she entertained numerous writer and artist friends including Bertrand Russell, Henry Faulkner, Roald Dahl and Tennessee Williams. She was the author of "A House in Sicily" (1999), published by Virago. Phelps attended St Felix School, Southwold, Suffolk, and subsequently trained in psychiatric social work at St Anne's College, Oxford, and at the London