A tube top, colloquially known in the UK as a boob tube,[1] is a shoulderless, sleeveless garment primarily worn by women that wraps around the upper torso. It is generally tight over the breasts, and usually uses elastic bands at its top and bottom to prevent it from falling. The tube top's precursor was a beachwear or informal summer garment worn by young girls in the 1950s that became more widely popular in the 1970s and returned to popularity in the 1990s and 2000s.[2]
In 2012, Iranian-Israeli fashion designer Elie Tahari claimed that he helped popularize the tube top after his arrival in New York in 1971.[3] The original tube tops, as spotted by Tahari in a New York factory run by Murray Kleid, were elasticated gauze tubes reportedly produced through a factory manufacturing error. Murray ran with this product for years, and eventually Tahari bought tubes from Kleid, later setting up his own factory to mass produce tube tops to meet widespread demand.[3]
- ^ "The Origin of 'Booby Trap'". The Straight Dope. 1 October 2002. "Boob tube" is a redesignation of a dismissive 1960s sobriquet for television, or "idiot box" ("boobs" derives from "bubbies"; the screen was a cathode-ray tube).
- ^ Beck, Rachel (1 June 1998). "Are you ready to slip back into a tube top this summer?". Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Associated Press. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
- ^ a b Kennedy, Pagan (17 August 2012). "Who Made That Tube Top?". The New York Times Magazine. p. MM19. Retrieved 20 January 2016.