Coming across this ad featuring Anna Kournikova, two things struck me . . .

The first is that the most vehement Russophobes on the net always seem to be women. Think they might be jealous?

You can say that Russian women have a superior knack of flaunting what they’ve got. And then I remembered that, in the case of bras, there is perhaps some foundation for this view.

The first woman to design a proper bra with cups and cup sizes was Russian. Well, White Russian. She was Ida Kaganovich Rosenthal from Minsk, who emigrated to the US in 1907.

Quite a few women had patented early versions of the bra but none were quite as comfortable or becoming as Ida’s. In the war years the seamstress had sewn pockets in coat-linings for carrier pigeons - very high-tech messaging for WW1 spies - so Ida had ready expertise in making a cosy place for things soft, warm and vulnerable.

In the ’20s, bras were more of a flat wraparound. The boobs of the flappers didn’t flap at all. They wore what you might describe today as a push-down bra. So, the Russian girl’s invention was infinitely more feminine and, by 1925, its appeal enabled Ida to set up the Maidenform company. The rest, as they say, is history.

A complete chronology of the bra is here.