Julia Jean "Lana" Turner was an American actress. Over a career spanning nearly five decades, she achieved fame as both a pin-up model and a film actress, as well as for her highly publicized personal life. In the mid-1940s, she was one of the highest-paid American actresses and one of MGM's biggest stars, with her films earning approximately one billion dollars in 2024 currency for the studio during her 18-year contract with them. Turner is frequently cited as a popular culture icon due to her glamourous persona and a screen legend of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She was nominated for numerous awards.
The Blond Ambition World Tour was the third concert tour by American singer Madonna. It supported her fourth studio album Like a Prayer (1989), and the soundtrack album to the 1990 film Dick Tracy, I'm Breathless. The 57-show tour began on April 13, 1990, at the Chiba Marine Stadium in Chiba, Japan, and concluded on August 5, 1990, at the Stade Charles-Ehrmann in Nice, France. Additionally, it marked Madonna's first concerts in Sweden and Spain. Originally planned as the Like a Prayer World Tour, it was supposed to be sponsored by soft drink manufacturer Pepsi. However, the company cancelled the contract following the controversy surrounding the music video of "Like a Prayer".
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was an American actress and model. She was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s. She starred in more than 20 films.
Frederick's of Hollywood is an American lingerie brand formerly with stores in shopping malls across the United States. In 2015, all 111 retail stores were closed before a bankruptcy filing. The brand was acquired by Authentic Brands Group and was relaunched as an online-only store, FOH Online Corp. In 2018, Naked Brand Group, Inc. acquired FOH Online Corp.
"Material Girl" is a song recorded by American singer Madonna for her second studio album, Like a Virgin (1984). It was released on January 23, 1985, by the Sire label as the second single from Like a Virgin. It also appears slightly remixed on the 1990 greatest hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection, in its original form on the 2009 greatest hits compilation, Celebration and Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones (2022). The song was written by Peter Brown and Robert Rans, and produced by Nile Rodgers. Madonna said the concept of the song was indicative of her life at that time, and she liked it because she felt it was provocative.
A nursing bra is a specialized brassiere that provides additional support to women who are lactating and permits comfortable breastfeeding without the need to remove the bra. This is accomplished by specially designed bra cups that include flaps which can be opened with one hand to expose the nipple. The flap is usually held closed with a simple clasp or hook.
Cleavage is the narrow depression or hollow between the breasts of a woman. The superior portion of cleavage may be accentuated by clothing such as a low-cut neckline that exposes the division, and often the term is used to describe the low neckline itself, instead of the term décolletage. Joseph Breen, head of the U.S. film industry's Production Code Administration, coined the term in its current meaning when evaluating the 1943 film The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell. The term was explained in Time magazine on August 5, 1946. It is most commonly used in the parlance of Western female fashion to refer to necklines that reveal or emphasize décolletage.
The term bombshell is a forerunner to the term "sex symbol" used to describe popular women regarded as very attractive. The Online Etymology Dictionary by Douglas Harper attests the usage of the term in this meaning since 1942. Bombshell has a longer history in its other, more general figurative meaning of a "shattering or devastating thing or event" since 1860.
"Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" is a jazz song introduced by Carol Channing in the original Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949), with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Leo Robin.
Fashion in the years following World War II is characterized by the resurgence of haute couture after the austerity of the war years. Square shoulders and short skirts were replaced by the soft femininity of Christian Dior's "New Look" silhouette, with its sweeping longer skirts, fitted waist, and rounded shoulders, which in turn gave way to an unfitted, structural look in the later 1950s.
The most characteristic North American fashion trend from the 1930s to 1945 was attention at the shoulder, with butterfly sleeves and banjo sleeves, and exaggerated shoulder pads for both men and women by the 1940s. The period also saw the first widespread use of man-made fibers, especially rayon for dresses and viscose for linings and lingerie, and synthetic nylon stockings. The zipper became widely used. These essentially U.S. developments were echoed, in varying degrees, in Britain and Europe. Suntans became fashionable in the early 1930s, along with travel to the resorts along the Mediterranean, in the Bahamas, and on the east coast of Florida where one can acquire a tan, leading to new categories of clothes: white dinner jackets for men and beach pajamas, halter tops, and bare midriffs for women.
The history of bras is closely tied to the social status of women, the evolution of fashion, and shifting views of the female body over time.
Bra size indicates the size characteristics of a bra. While there is a number of bra sizing systems in use around the world, the bra sizes usually consist of a number, indicating the size of the band around the woman's torso, and one or more letters that indicate the breast cup size. Bra cup sizes were invented in 1932 while band sizes became popular in the 1940s. For convenience, because of the impracticality of determining the size dimensions of each breast, the volume of the bra cup, or cup size, is based on the difference between band length and over-the-bust measurement.
Jayne Mansfield was an actress, singer, Playboy playmate and stage show performer who had an enormous impact on popular culture of the late 1950s despite her limited success in Hollywood. She has remained a well-known subject in popular culture ever since. During a period between 1956 and 1957, there were about 122,000 lines of copy and 2,500 photographs that appeared in newspapers. In an article on her in the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (1999), Dennis Russel said that "Although many people have never seen her movies, Jayne Mansfield remains, long after her death, one of the most recognizable icons of 1950s celebrity culture." In the novel Child of My Heart (2004) by Alice McDermott, a National Book Award winning writer, the 1950s is referred to as "in those Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield days". R. L. Rutsky and Bill Osgerby has claimed that it was Mansfield along with Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot who made the bikini popular.
A bra, short for brassiere or brassière, is a form-fitting underwear that is primarily used to support and cover a woman's breasts. A typical bra consists of a chest band that wraps around the torso, supporting two breast cups that are held in place by shoulder straps. A bra usually fastens in the back, using a hook and eye fastener, although bras are available in a large range of styles and sizes, including front-fastening and backless designs. Some bras are designed for specific functions, such as nursing bras to facilitate breastfeeding or sports bras to minimize discomfort during exercise.
A training bra is a lightweight brassiere designed for girls who have begun to develop breasts, at Tanner stage II and III. The training bra is intended to be worn during puberty when the breasts are not yet large enough to fit a standard-sized bra. Training bras often provide minimal or no support, and may serve aesthetic purposes to fulfill cultural norms and local beauty standards.
An underwire bra is a brassiere that utilizes a thin, semi-circular strip of rigid material fitted inside the brassiere fabric to help lift, separate, shape, and support a woman's breasts. The wire may be made of metal, plastic, or resin. It is sewn into the bra fabric and under each cup, from the center gore to under the wearer's armpit. Many different brassiere designs incorporate an underwire, including shelf bras, demi bras, nursing bras, and bras built into other articles of clothing, such as tank tops, dresses and swimsuits.
Since her rise to fame in the 1940s, American film actress Lana Turner (1921–1995) has appeared and been referenced in numerous works across literature, film, art, and music. Her glamorous persona and publicized personal troubles have contributed to her recurring prevalence in popular culture.
Thousands of years of history provide evidence of the differing fashions, cultural norms, and artistic depictions regarding cleavage and clothes that accentuate or flaunt cleavage. From the absolute modesty of the 16th century, to the Merveilleuses Directoire dresses with their transparency, the décolleté has followed the times and is much more than a simple fashion effect.
