About the Calendar.
The Show Us Your Bra!™ Contest was born in 1998 to celebrate brave and creative women on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Gazebo, a lingerie and post mastectomy shop in Northampton, Massachusetts. The strong commitment to helping women in need in the community spurred owner, Judith Fine, and colleague Emma Dostal, to find a way to combine fashion and fun, while offering women living with cancer the dignity they deserve. Artists and artists-at-heart were invited to submit bra designs that were beautiful or humorous, and often were both. The contest was so enthusiastically received that a second one was held in 1999. The beautiful, funny and festive “bra-art” created by the “bratistes” for these two events were featured in the first Show Us Your Bra!™ Calendar produced for the millennial year 2000, and the sale of the calendar was used to benefit The Breast Form Fund. The Calendar has since been produced annually, through 2009.
“Bratistes,” artists who contributed “bra-art” for the calendar’s months, have come from every walk of life—and from all over the country – and there have even been international submissions. The “bratistes” statements, which accompany their cleverly named bras, included a dedication or a tribute to brave women who had either beaten cancer or lost the fight, and in doing so have forever touched the lives of the creators. The calendars, created from the “bra-art”, have brought laughter and tears to the thousands of people who have become part of the extended Show Us Your Bra!™ community.
The success of the Calendar, and its associated Gala, propelled The Breast Form Fund to grow from its local community into a statewide-program, currently offering grants for breast prostheses and post mastectomy bras to women in need throughout Massachusetts, with an emphasis on the four counties in the western part of the state.
Now, with the Calendar created for the first time by the new All4One Alliance, bringing together 4 extraordinary non profits that work with women living with and beyond a breast cancer diagnosis, Show Us Your Bra!™ is taking on a new life.
As a founding member in this partnership, The Breast Form Fund has offered the creativity and fun spirit of the Show Us Your Bra!™ Calendar to the Alliance as the heart of the fundraiser for all – to share and thus help the Alliance better serve post mastectomy and lumpectomy women in need to receive the dignity and care that they deserve.
The 2011 Show Us Your Bra™ Calendar, which features designs by celebrity, as well as soon-to-be-known, “bra-tistes” brings new exquisite, humorous, cleverly-named, “bra-art” which will inspire and touch the lives of many more people.