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Report Casts Doubt On Bra Tree Evolution

December 15, 2008

We’ve been reporting on shoe trees for years, but every so often a rumor would trickle in about a bra tree. More specific bra tree tips arrived starting in 2005, in states such as California and Vermont and Arizona. We figured Bra Trees might be just a natural (and naughty) progression from the more established Shoe Trees.

But our lazy assumption may have been wrong. A story in the Tacoma News Tribune reports that the Bra Tree in McCall, Idaho, has been around since 1996, and it was probably inspired by one in southern Idaho that’s “much older” (perhaps back as far as the Maidenform Epoch?).

Could Bra Trees have preceded Shoe Trees?

Bra Trees are usually reported underneath ski lifts (such as the Brundage Mountain Ski Resort bra tree), which makes sense: it’s easier to drop them into branches than to hurl them skyward, and a ski lift provides a measure of privacy to do the extraction and precision-drop the payload. Not exactly a girls-gone-wild moment (or Mardis Gra,  without the beads) but like shoe trees tossing, it’s some arcane rite of passage.

According to the News Tribune, the McCall Bra Tree is such an established “icon” that Bra Tree shirts are sold in its ski resort gift shop.

That beats out any Shoe Tree merchandising we’ve yet seen. But shoes predate both bras and ski lifts by a comfortable margin of centuries, and we’ve heard from a couple of people who recall shoe trees back into the mid-20th century, if not earlier. We may have to spend some time at a bra tree to figure this one out…

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