LORRAINE SMITH’S BRAS
Lorraine H Smith is an independent researcher who specialises in 20th-century textiles and underwear. She has collected vintage bras since 2014, and now has more than 40 lovingly stored in her Leeds home.
I don’t really call myself a collector, I’m a person who is building a collection. I suspect that once my collection becomes less easy to store I will have to change my mindset and start to call myself a collector!
My collection really started with a research trip to the Symington Collection, a collection of underwear and swimwear in Market Harborough. I was trapped in it by road workers who had dug through a gas main outside, and while we were waiting the archivist said, “As we’re going to be here for a while I I might as well show you some other objects from the collection. Have I told you about the inflatable bra?”
I began buying bras after searching eBay to see if there was anyone selling genuine vintage bras rather than reproductions. It turns out there’s a lot of them!
I talk about my collection with people on social media, friends, researchers, archivists, students; anyone who shows an interest really.
If my house was on fire, I would save one of my boxes of bras. A benefit of collecting small objects is that they don’t take up much space, so I’d grab the box that’s on top. Perhaps I should put all my rarest finds into the same box, just in case.
If I was strapped for cash, I would sell something else. None of the bras in my collection are worth much individually, and I doubt they’d fetch much as a collection. Their value to me is more in what they represent as a part of my research and a moment in history.
The auction of my collection would be called ‘The Bra Lady’: a surprisingly uplifting collection.
If I won the lottery I would buy proper archive storage boxes, a few bras from the 1910s/1920s, or a museum space where I could hold exhibitions.
The most interesting place I found something was in a vintage shop in Ibiza Town. It was interesting to see 1930s, 40s and 50s bras being sold as 2020s clubwear.
Whilst collecting these things I met a curator at the V&A. She was working on an underwear exhibition and so I shared a list of the bras I’d donated to London College of Fashion’s Archives, just in case there was anything that might be of interest. Two of my bras ended up being loaned for the exhibition.
This collection will end when I’m bored of bras. I can’t see me stopping collecting for any reason other than if it stops being interesting.
JUKEBOX MARGARET
Stan was an creative experiment that ran between April 2021-October 2022 by a group of people passionate about the meaning of the things. Stan appreciated the preservation of people’s collections and stories to help us find peace in a world of digital chaos.
Stan celebrated the collector as a valued participant in history as it is rewritten; believing these new citizen curators can help us see the world differently. If we can better understand why people collect, we can start to think about the future value of things, making it less messy for the generations to come.
Stan celebrated the ordinary; the low; sometimes the high; often the ephemeral; but always the wonderful.
Stan rethought the past in the modern world.
Stan collected collectors.
If you walk down a particular terrace in Islington, North London, and peer through one of the windows of a certain flat-fronted townhouse you may be lucky enough to spot nine glowing jukeboxes inside.
In fact this is the work of a lady known locally as Jukebox Margaret, collector of these wonderful vintage machines.
It all started back in the mid 1990s, when Margaret’s late husband David worked as an antiques silver dealer. David had a reputation for being a bit of detective, and knowing the intricate ins and outs of all his stock. One day a client confessed to David that he was itching to own a jukebox, in the hope that David, with his ability to track down obscure items, would be the perfect person to help.
Using specialist knowledge picked up over years spent at fairs, auctions and record shops, David did indeed locate a jukebox for his client – but the story didn’t end there. In the process of searching he had become obsessed by jukeboxes himself, and he teamed up with an importer to build his own collection. The problem came when the lease ended at his shop off Bond Street, and he had to move out. Moving the silver was easy; moving two jukeboxes not so much. Margaret let him bring them home.
David died a few years ago, but his love of sound and music lives on in Margaret’s heart. She is gently restoring and selling them, but she is choosy about who she deals with; she has to like you first, and then you have to solemnly promise to respect the specialist craftsmanship.
A selection from the collection occupies her living room, the oldest being from 1948 and the youngest from 1962. I was once lucky enough to be invited in to “play a few records, press a few buttons” on them. Margaret taught me how to do a teddy boy spin, and then "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted" came on, and we both had a little cry. It was that slight crackle in the sound that transported us back in time; not something you'll ever get from Spotify.
