A strapless, band-shaped top that covers the bust without shoulder straps, sleeves, or any apparatus of suspension—a garment that stays in place by friction and faith alone.
The word bandeau is French for a small band, and the garment is exactly that: a band of fabric that wraps around the torso. Historically, bandeaus were worn as undergarments in the 1920s, flattening the bust to achieve the boyish silhouette required by the fashions of the Jazz Age. They were the structural opposite of the corset: not to shape but to suppress.
Bandeaus occupy a unique place in fashion’s vocabulary of exposure. A bandeau reveals the shoulders, the back, the arms—all the areas a conventional top covers. Yet it also conceals, more thoroughly than a bikini, the area it covers. The bandeau is a study in strategic exposure: it hides exactly what other tops reveal, and reveals exactly what other tops hide.
