In Praise of: the Triumph Doreen Bra

Me in the seventies

I don't mean to brag but in the words of Pulp's Disco 2000, I was the first girl at school to get breasts. At the time I hated them – they were a source of misery to me – but I had always been a big girl. No lean, light-limbed pre-pubescent androgyny for me. This girl blossomed straight from toddling to premature adolescence, metamorphising overnight.

Seventies childhood photographs depict a pot-bellied chubby cherub in a shower cap one minute, and precocious pre-teen introvert with substantial thighs and bosom the next. No sooner had my body learnt to walk, it seemed, it began sprouting hair in previously unheard of regions and piling on pads of adipose tissue, developing convex curves of Monroe-esque proportions in all directions.

As I turned nine years old I was almost physically fully grown. Everyone assumed I was much older than I really was and at primary school I was taller than even some of the teachers. The strange smell accompanying this process alerted everyone within a radius of ten feet, particularly mum as she plaited my hair in the mornings, that it was time to start facing the issue.

In fact, there were several issues. In addition to the one that was soon to trickle between my legs, it was obvious that I needed a bra. While most girls get excited about their first bra, I was mortified to be encountering this milestone so soon. Sticking out like a sore thumb I looked on in envy at the skinny, one-dimensional little bodies of those around me, wondering where Mother Nature had gone wrong and why she’d singled me out.
With a child’s mind in a woman’s body I felt like a freak trying to camouflage myself – Eve after the Fall – when people (especially boys) started laughing and making crude comments about my breasts wobbling as I ran during PE.

Lolo Ferrari, I miss you.

My breasts had arrived, there was no getting away from it, and with them my first bra. A proper bra, as opposed to a training bra, it was needed: I remember how comfortable it soon came to feel, and how I knew I'd never be able to go without it. I had two of the same one, and they served me well. In fact, I still have one of them in a drawer somewhere – not that I could wear it now, of course. While at the time I might have felt like I could have given Lolo Ferrari a run for her money, you couldn't fit two tangerines in there. Each cup would barely cover a nipple.

Over the years many, many bras have come into my life, from those early ones bought in high street department stores, to the Wonderbra, which as a student and throughout my twenties was my bra of choice. Despite not always being very comfortable, and despite it always being obvious that you were wearing one, it never occurred to me to wear any other kind.

It was only when I had a scare with a lump that I started to view my breasts – and underwires – in a different way. Strapping my boobs up in a strip of wire no longer seemed right, and I wanted to treat them a bit more kindly. It wasn't just technology that was becoming wireless, but my bras were, too.

Which worried me a bit because for a while it seemed that non-wired bras were becoming a bit of a rarity. The world had gone underwire mad, and soft bras were pretty hard to come by. You had to look hard to find them, losing yourself in the lingerie departments, only to find a tiny selection tucked away in a small corner of Marks and Spark's, which for years until recently was my go-to place, the only place, it seemed, for soft, practical, non-wired bras in designs and colours pretty enough to want to wear.
Then I happened to see a picture of a cerise pink Triumph Doreen bra and everything changed.

A bra associated with little old ladies, just as its name is – a 'granny bra', if you like – the Triumph Doreen has never been fashionable, or sexy. Considered less aesthetically pleasing than other more delicate confections, it has a touch of wartime about it – air raid sirens, cups of tea, tan-coloured tights (or stockings) and the smell of cabbages. It's the kind of bra Norah Batty would wear.

But perhaps it's time to reconsider. I don't know what it was that made me buy it, but as soon as I put it on I was glad that I'd trusted my instinct. Any woman knows that feeling that comes when you take your bra off at night and give your breasts some air. Oh, the relief! Putting one of these on felt as good as taking an underwired bra off. You can tell the Triumph Doreen is an example of good design and engineering just by looking at it. It's like something something Brunel would have made, and I often find myself marvelling at this triumph of polyamide, elastane and cotton just as I would a cathedral, bridge or a railway track across a stretch of sea.

With full cups split into three sections and strong, thick adjustable straps, the Triumph Doreen lifts and separates the breasts, lending unparalleled support. And while I could go on for ages about its technical brilliance, its Trenslo side boning and solid underband, style is not sacrificed for comfort.

Christina Hendricks as Joan in Mad Men.

It also gives the bust a pleasing shape, sculpting an outline that is reminiscent of yet softer than the severe pointed zeppelin bras of the 1940s and 50s. You can imagine Christina Hendricks' character Joan in Mad Men wearing a Doreen. The pretty floral lace on the cups is also to die for.

Dare I say it, but given the popularity of 1940s and 50s-style fashions and all things vintage, the Triumph Doreen may actually be undergoing a bit of a renaissance. While not exactly unpopular – it is apparently the world's best selling bra, and with good reason – it is underappreciated.

Perhaps because it does its job so well we've come to take it for granted. After all, this bra doesn't mess about. You can put it on, forget about it and get down to the business of the day. There's none of the fiddling about that you get with other bras. These straps stay where they should, so you don't have to push yourself about Les Dawson style.

Never mind a big girl's blouse, this is a big girl's bra, the bra of all bras. Yet it doesn't have to shout about it. Quietly getting on with its job since 1967, it has endured. A true design classic, the Triumph Doreen is a bra that makes you feel you're looking after your breasts, not torturing them.

I've always been busty, never more so than I am now. Since buying my first Doreen in cerise pink, I now have eight: two each in cerise pink, tea rose, navy blue and trusty black. While I normally can't abide the word 'iconic', it can be used in this case. Perhaps there's no bra more iconic than this one.