The science of lingerie: Smarty pants and brave new bras

The Science of Lingerie:
Smarty Pants

And
Brave New Bras

Scientists use motion-capture sensor technology to measure how breasts bounce during exercise.

At the lingerie counter, science wears hot pink and baby blue. It comes in stretch satin, breathable mesh and tiny lace daisies. Making a bra, says one designer, is harder than building a bridge. Lift. Support. Hold. Don't look now, but there's a thesis in biomechanics sitting in your underwear drawer.

From knickers made with fabric that absorbs odour, to shapewear that dispenses cellulite smoothing moisturiser and bras with silicon instead of underwire, science is revolutionising our smalls.

The real miracle? That it's all taken so long. A century after the first bra patent, nearly three-quarters of women who exercise still experience breast pain. A recent survey of 10,000 women determined 64 percent were wearing the wrong bra size – and 73 percent agreed the fit of their undergarments could make or break their day.

Trade import data from Statistics New Zealand shows that last year, some $54.9 million worth of bras entered the country. Lingerie companies know that making their offering your undie of choice is big business. And they're turning to science and technology to get the commercial edge.
"Sports apparel companies used to think of the trainer as their only true technical product," says Professor Joanna Scurr. "Now, sports bras are their lead technical product for women – and I'm delighted they realise that."

Scurr works in the breast health research group at the University of Portsmouth, on England's south coast.
"When we first started research on this area, there were only six published papers on the biomechanics of the breast. Six papers! In 2005!? It's just unbelievable."

Today, Portsmouth's clients include international lingerie giants, and (more on this later) a tiny New Zealand company which makes chest protection gear for female karate fighters – and has just sold the intellectual property rights to a cantilevered bra its inventors believe could change the underwear industry forever.
Mary Phelps Jacob is credited with making the moneyed world's first bra, in 1914, from two handkerchiefs and some ribbon. The earliest sports model was created in the 70s from, reportedly, two male jockstraps. Necessity might be the mother of invention, but clearly a pouch designed to hold testicles was never going to be a long-term solution.

Professor Joanna Scurr, of the University of Portsmouth's breast health research group. Photo: Supplied.

"Research has progressed to suggest a sports bra should do a lot more than support the breast," says Scurr. "Now, we're considering it from a multi-disciplinary perspective – comfort, aesthetics, how it's shaped to lift the breast and how it stops movement."

Startling fact: boobs bounce. But, using the same kind of motion-capture sensor technology that allowed Sir Peter Jackson to turn Andy Serkis into Gollum in Lord of the Rings, scientists can now tell us the exact nature of that bounce.

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Portsmouth researchers have determined that during walking, a woman's breasts move evenly up and down, in and out, and side to side. When she starts to run, however, those ratios change – 51 percent of movement is up and down, 22 percent side to side and 27 percent in and out. Total movement ranges from around 10 centimetres for a woman with an average-sized bust, to a maximum 21 centimetres recorded in a woman with a G-cup.

"You get this figure of eight pattern," explains Scurr. "So really, we should be looking at bras to prevent that specific type of movement."

***
Enter the likes of New Plymouth's QP Sport. According to local legend, back in 1978 nuns from a local girls' school were looking for a chest protector for their football-playing students. An orthotics specialist produced the prototypes and, in 1981, a company was established to market and manufacture the product. Today, QP is a worldwide supplier of protective chest gear used in sports like fencing, karate and roller derby.

"In the past, this sort of thing was mainly guesswork," says company owner Richard Shearer. "Nowadays, science is at our disposal and there's pretty much nothing we can't find out."

So, when clients reported the specialist chest gear was performing better than their regular sports bra, Shearer went looking for experts who could tell him why.

"My mates think I sit down and watch girls with no bras on run on treadmills, which, yeah, could be fun – but it's not like that."

At Portsmouth, says Shearer, scientists discovered the rigidity of QP's karate bra considerably reduced breast bounce. The design was honed and Shearer says the final, cantilevered creation is capable of cutting breast movement by 86 percent. He says a major lingerie company (that he can't name) has licensed QP's intellectual property and plans to put it into commercial production by 2017.

"We're probably the smallest bra company in the world. We have six staff and a very niche market. Now, we're sitting on what could be a very major advance in how bras are made."

Shearer says until now, advances in bra design have been incremental. "It's changing now, because of sports science. There's a sense of responsibility starting to emerge about what we're making now. It's just good sense. Why sell something you know isn't performing? Many women have told me they've been wearing two bras for exercise. Why would you do that? I'm not wearing two pair of shoes."

One theory: "I think there's a bit of a taboo about the bra industry. Guys don't talk about it, and there are probably too many guys who own bra companies."

But, says Shearer, "Hopefully our product will hit the mainstream. I'm hoping women will find, yes, it works, and they'll tell other women and a new level will be set."

Underwear developments from the University of Portsmouth lab. Photo: Supplied.

 
Wearing the wrong underwear is not just uncomfortable, it can also be bad for your health. Badly supported breasts can contribute to back and neck pain, and it's not uncommon for larger-busted women to develop deep and painful grooves on their shoulders where bra straps have dug in, struggling to carry the weight of the breast.

In fact, says Sian Thomas, head of creative design at Triumph International, "you should be able to drop the straps of a bra and it should stay up. They are just to adjust the fit."

The Germany-based former womenswear designer says underwear is like architecture. "It has to perform a job. But then, you also have to make it look feminine, soft and comfortable."

There's an inherent challenge, she says, about making something that has to fit tightly around a woman's body at the very point – the lungs – where she needs room to breathe.

"I think it's one of the most complex clothing design jobs. A bra has to support weight, it has to function, and that's part of the reason why its construction has stayed similar for a long time – the metal bra wire has been around nearly 50 years – but now, it's getting really exciting."

Bonded seams, for example, that do away with the need for sewing, give underwear a cleaner finish. "It's almost like the garment disappears on the body."

Triumph's 'Magic Wire' range uses silicon instead of an underwire. "It's a totally new way of designing for us... It's very complex. A development like that takes about two years to complete."

Thomas says the advent of 3D printing is speeding things up. Previously, if a designer wanted to change components, like the sliders on a strap, it was a costly, lengthy process. Now they can have a cheap prototype back within days.

"I think, as women, we kind of just deal with things sometimes. You get on with things, and you don't think about how your life could be better until you see something different."

But, she says, as customers become more aware of science and technology, they're demanding advances in their underwear. "The magic wire, for example, is really high tech. But it's much more comfortable than you've ever felt before, so the customer instantly connects. 'Comfort? I want that. And if high-tech is how I'm going to get it, then great.'"

Thomas says innovation is not always obvious. The customer, she says, may not know that fabrics have been lab-tested to see how far they can be stretched before they break; how many times elastic can be laundered before it gives; that knitting elastane into lace was a serious breakthrough in the 'pretty' stakes; that, one day, someone at Triumph suggested making the tips of a standard underwire more flexible to stop them digging into the flesh.

"The innovation is so amazing, you can't see it. It's like the Emperor's new clothes. But believe me, it does all this stuff!"

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Changes ahoy in the underwear world: A Triumph International Amourette bra. Photo: Supplied.

The tech-spec undie might be going mainstream, but its development owes much to high-performance sport, medicine – and the military.

"Self-cleaning underwear goes weeks without washing," proclaimed livescience.com in a story about the US Airforce's US$20 million investment in a smart fabric with a coating that could repel water, oil and bacteria.
"During Desert Storm," scientist Jeff Owens is reported as saying, "most casualties were from bacterial infections – not accidents or friendly fire. We treated underwear for soldiers who tested them for several weeks and found they remained hygienic. They also helped clear up some skin complaints."

(Here in New Zealand, the only specialist underwear requirements identified by the Defence Force include merino and thermal under-layers and wool socks for cold weather. Only the Navy has a specific policy, with advice that underwear should not be visible under a "whites" uniform and that cotton underwear is recommended, for safety reasons, if inclusion in a fire party was possible.)

Internationally, scientists are working on smart fabrics that suppress unwanted gas (the 'Shreddies' brand claims to filter stench 200 times stronger than the average fart); silver has been incorporated into fabric because of its antibacterial properties; and next-to-skin clothing that incorporates vital-sign-monitoring sensors is being developed for the health industry.

Lingerie trade fairs have long trumpeted innovations like a Dutch-designed bra that claimed to smooth cleavage crinkle while its wearer slept, and a French range made from milk protein-containing fabrics designed to hydrate the skin. Durex, most famous for condoms, made multiple headlines when it announced a product called 'Fundawear' – vibrating underwear that was controlled via a smartphone app.

When Sunday approached Durex for an update on the latter, no one called us back. But we were there, two years ago, when All Black Dan Carter fronted a campaign for Jockey's new smart fabric performance underwear, containing technology that claimed to reflect energy into the body's deep muscles.

"As an athlete, you're always looking for that extra one percent," he told us in a hotel room that contained a fruit platter, four media minders and a life-size cut-out of rugby's most famous first five-eighth in his underpants.

***
The jury is out on just how smart some of these smart fabrics really are. "I think some of that is just nonsense," says Raechel Laing, head of Otago University's Applied Science department. But, says the clothing and textile sciences professor, "I know at least one large employer of a large number of people here that is being expected to include products that have antimicrobial treatments."

And at Otago, researchers are currently experimenting with socks, measuring the effects of different kinds of fibres on skin health indicators. So far, says Laing, wool has shown the most promise in achieving "elevated stratum corneum hydration" at the heel (that's science for skin that doesn't feel like rhinoceros hide).
It makes sense, says Laing, that underwear is at the forefront of the smart fabric revolution, because these are the garments we wear closest to our skin, where delivery is at its most effective.

But Laing warns against pressure from marketers jumping on the tech-band wagon. "'If it's available, we've got to have it' – without understanding the full implications."

Coated fabrics, for example. "Is it a surface treatment that can be released? In some cases, that is desirable, because you might want to use it as a treatment for some sort of infection, so it's like a drug release. But if it's a washable garment that you need to be cleaning over time… then where does it go? Into waterways? And what effect does that have?"

Laing says as populations become wealthier, our consumption of fibre increases.

"There is insufficient natural fibre to meet the demand, and fibres are being used in a much wider range of applications than previously – insulation, weed control mats, geo-textiles that manage surface ground movement, the interiors of motor vehicles. Textiles are everywhere."
Source : stuff

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