Pokebra

About

Pokébra is a woman’s undergarment decorated to appear as if it consists of two Pokéballs, an item used to catch and hold creatures in the Pokémon media franchise. It has inspired a photo fad on sites like Tumblr people post pictures of themselves wearing the do-it-yourself (DIY) craft brassiere.

Origin

On November 22nd, 2010, Tumblr^[1] user Selina Zawacki uploaded a photo of the Pokébra (shown below, left), along with several pictures of herself modeling the undergarment. Zawacki revealed that the inspiration for the bra design came from a webcomic (shown below, right) by Tumblr user mis0happy.^[4]

Spread

On November 25th, 2010, Zawacki submitted the Pokébra picture to the social news site Reddit in a post titled "look at the pokébra I made ;p."^[7] The image reached the front page and accumulated 2,761 up votes prior to being archived. On November 29th, the pop culture blog Unreality Magazine^[14] highlighted the bra photo, describing it as an excessive Halloween costume. On April 27th, 2011, YouTuber ProcrastinateDaily uploaded a video explaining how to make a Pokébra:

On May 9th, the Pokébra Tumblr^[3] blog was created and posted an infographic on how to create a Pokébra the same day (shown below). On June 27th, the fad was covered on the tech blog Slash Gear^[10], which reported that online retailers had begun selling the fashion accessory.

On January 2nd, 2012, the “Best Pokebra”^[9] Tumblr blog was created, where users can submit photos of themselves wearing the decorated brassiere. On January 9th, a Pokébra^[8] Cheezburger site was launched, which highlighted notable Pokébra examples. On March 25th, Redditor xXxTehxXx submitted a post titled "Pokebra" to the /r/pics^[15] subreddit, featuring a photograph of a young woman wearing a Pokébra (shown below). Within five months, the post received over 1,100 up votes and 130 comments. Several Pokébras are available for purchase on the handmade and vintage items site Etsy.^[11][12][13] A Facebook^[5] page has received over 350 likes as of September 11th, 2012.

Notable Examples

Several Tumblr users posted photos of themselves modeling the brassiere.

Related Merchandise

Due to the Pokeball's symbolic status within the Pokemon fandom, a variety of merchandise and accessories based off the design have been created and showcased online, including shoes, necklaces and hats:

The online popularity of Pokébra has also inspired a range of similar, DIY-crafted brassieres that are designed after other fandoms, most notably with the Super Mario Brothers franchise.

Search Interest

External References