Bandeau soft fabric and delicate trimmings providing little support or shaping. The design was patented in 1916 in the United States by Edgar Guggenheim and resembled the contours and wrapping effects of the scultetus binder used in hospitals. It was sometimes made from an elastic material to flatten or suppress the breasts in the style of the period. When the "boyish" silhouette went out of fashion, the word "brassiere" or later "bra" became the term for more shapely support garments. The term bandeau also refers to the thin headband traditionally worn—until recently—underneath and supporting the veil by the nuns of many
Bandeau linen that was wrapped across the breasts and tied or pinned at the back. As a silhouette the bandeau was also worn in Roman times. Archaeologist James Mellaart described the earliest bandeau-like costume in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia in the Chalcolithic era (around 5600 BC), where a mother goddess is depicted astride two leopards wearing a costume somewhat like a modern bandeau-style bikini. In the Greco-Roman world, women athletes wearing two-piece garments were depicted on urns and paintings dating back to 1400 BC. In the floor of "Coronation of the Winner" hall of Villa Romana del Casale, a Roman villa in Sicily