Mary Phelps Jacob

Caresse Crosby (born Mary Phelps Jacob; April 20, 1892 – January 24, 1970) was an American publisher and writer. Time called her the "literary godmother to the Lost Generation of expatriate writers in Paris." As an American patron of the arts, she and her second husband, Harry Crosby, founded the Black Sun Press, which was instrumental in publishing some of the early works of many authors who would later become famous, among them Anaïs Nin, Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, Archibald MacLeish, Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, Hart Crane, and Robert Duncan. She was also the recipient of a patent for the first successful modern bra.

Early life and education

Born on April 20, 1891, in New Rochelle, New York, she was the oldest child of Mary (née Phelps) Jacob and William Hearn Jacob, who were both descended from American colonial families—her mother from the William Phelps family, and her father from the Van Rensselaers. Her mother was the daughter of Civil War General Walter Phelps, and she had two brothers, Leonard and Walter "Bud" Phelps Jacob. She was nicknamed "Polly" to distinguish her from her mother.

Polly's family was not fabulously rich, but her father had been raised, as she put it, "to ride to hounds, sail boats, and lead cotillions," and he lived extravagantly. In 1914, the family presented her to the King of England at a garden party. In keeping with the American aristocratic style of the times, she was even photographed as a child by Charles Dana Gibson, for whom the iconic term "Gibson girl" was coined.

She grew up, she later said, "in a world where only good smells existed. What I wanted usually came to pass." She was an uninterested student. Author Geoffrey Wolff wrote that for the most part Polly "lived her life in dreams."

Her family divided its time between estates in Manhattan at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, in Watertown, Connecticut, and in New Rochelle, New York, and she enjoyed the advantages of an upper-class lifestyle. She attended formal balls, Ivy League school dances, and received equestrian training at a horse riding school. She studied dance at the studio of composer and society tastemaker Allen Dodsworth, attended Miss Chapin's School in New York City, and then boarded at Rosemary Hall, a prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut that later merged to form Choate Rosemary Hall, where she played the part of Rosalind in As You Like It to critical acclaim.

After her father's death in 1908, she lived with her mother at their home in Watertown, Connecticut. That same year she met her future husband, Richard Peabody, at summer camp. Her brother Len was boarding at Westminster School, and Bud was a day student at Taft School. Approaching her own debut, she danced in balls most nights, and slept from four in the morning until noon. "At twelve I was called and got ready for the customary debutante luncheon." She graduated from Rosemary Hall in 1910, at age 19.

Development of the backless brassiere

That same year, Crosby prepared to attend a débutante ball one evening. As was customary, she put on a corset stiffened with whalebone and a restrictive, tight cover that flattened and jammed her breasts together. The point of a corset was to cinch the waist in as tightly as possible, holding a woman's torso erect. It would have been difficult to feel comfortable dressed in such a confining garment. Mary had worn that same dress at her debut to society a few weeks earlier. It was a sheer evening gown with a plunging neckline to display the cleavage. However, in this case the corset cover, a "boxlike armour of whalebone and pink cordage," poked out from under the gown, so she called her personal maid. She told her, "Bring me two of my pocket handkerchiefs and some pink ribbon ... And bring the needle and thread and some pins." She fashioned the handkerchiefs and ribbon into a simple bra.

Mary's devised undergarment complemented the new fashions of the time. She was mobbed after the dance by other girls who wanted to know how she moved so freely, and when she showed the garment to friends the next day, they all wanted one. One day, she received a request for one of her contraptions from a stranger, who offered a dollar for her efforts. She knew then that this could become a viable business.

Patent granted

Crosby filed for a patent for her invention on February 12, 1914, and in November that year the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted her a patent for the 'Backless Brassiere'. Crosby likened her design to earlier covers over the bosom when a woman wore a low corset. Her design had shoulder straps to attach to the garment's upper and lower corners, and wrap-around laces for the lower corners which tied at the woman's front, enabling her to wear gowns cut low in the back. Crosby wrote that her invention was "well-adapted to women of different size" and was "so efficient that it may be worn by persons engaged in violent exercise like tennis." Her design was lightweight, soft, and comfortable to wear. It naturally separated the breasts, unlike the corset, which was heavy, stiff, and uncomfortable, and had the effect of creating a single "monobosom" effect.

While Crosby's design was the first granted a patent within its category, The U.S. Patent Office and foreign patent offices had issued patents for various bra-like undergarments as early as the 1860s. Other brassiere designs had previously been invented and popularized for use within the United States since about 1910. By 1912, American mass-market brassiere manufacturers included Bien Jolie Brassieres and DeBevoise Brassieres. The latter first advertised its bust supporter in Vogue in 1904.

Leading European couturier Lucile actively endorsed bras, and both Lucile and Paul Poiret refined and promoted the brassiere, influencing fashionable women to wear their designs, Paris couturier Herminie Cadolle introduced a breast supporter in 1889. Her design was a sensation at the Great Exposition of 1900 and became a fast-selling design among wealthy Europeans in the next decade.

Business career

After she married Richard Peabody, Crosby filed a legal certificate with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on May 19, 1920, declaring that she was a married woman conducting a business using funds that were from her husband's bank account. In 1922 she founded the Fashion Form Brassière Company, locating her manufacturing shop on Washington Street in Boston, where she opened a two-woman sweatshop to manufacture her wireless brassières. The location also became a convenient place for romantic trysts with Harry Crosby, who would become her second husband.

In her later autobiography, The Passionate Years, she maintained that she had "a few hundred (units) of her design produced." She managed to secure a few orders from department stores, but her business never took off. Harry, who had a distaste for conventional business and a generous trust fund, discouraged her from pursuing the business and persuaded her to close it. She later sold the brassiere patent to the Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for US$1,500 (roughly equivalent to $29,000 in current dollars). Warner manufactured the "Crosby" bra for a while, but it was not a popular style and was eventually discontinued. However, Warner would go on to earn more than US$15 million from the bra patent over the next thirty years.

In her later years, Crosby wrote, "I can't say the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it."