Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: SEND, Christiane Amanpour, Self Esteem, Return of the bullet bra

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

The Department for Education has just released the latest figures that show another rise in the number of Education, Health and Care Plans, or EHCPs, in England. These are the legal documents that outline what support a child or young person with special educational needs and disabilities is entitled to. The BBC’s education reporter Kate McGough, Jane Harris, vice chair of the Disabled Children's Partnership, and Jacquie Russell from West Sussex County Council joined Clare McDonnell.Christiane Amanpour has been at the forefront of international news for more than 40 years, reporting from all over the world as a journalist and war reporter as well as being CNN’s Chief International Anchor, steering the helm of several programmes including CNN International's nightly interview programme Amanpour. She’s now launched a podcast, Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex-Files with Jamie Rubin. It's a weekly foreign affairs show, co-hosted with Jamie, a former U.S. diplomat and Assistant Secretary of State and also her ex-husband. Christiane joined Clare to discuss.The musician, songwriter and actress, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, aka Self Esteem won the 2021 BBC Music Introducing Artist of the Year Award and achieved a nomination for the Mercury Prize in 2022 with Prioritise Pleasure. More recently she has performed the lead role of Sally Bowles in the West End production of Cabaret. She talks to Anita Rani about her new album, A Complicated Woman, and performing on the Park Stage at Glastonbury this weekend.The bullet bra has made a recent return to the catwalk and to the cover of British Vogue, where singer Dua Lipa can be seen sporting a blush satin Miu Miu creation in the July issue. But will the silhouette, once favoured by Marilyn Monroe and Madonna, cut through to the high street? And what does that mean for the comfortable t-shirt bras that have been going strong since lockdown? Julia Hobbs, British Vogue’s contributing senior fashion features editor has recently road-tested the bullet bra. She joins Clare to discuss the experience, along with Karolina Laskowska, a lingerie designer and the director of The Underpinnings Museum.Presenter: Clare McDonnell Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Rebecca Myatt

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, this is Claire McDonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome. Coming up, self esteem, aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor, who's been performing at Glastonbury this weekend. Also journalist and legendary war reporter Christiane Amanpour talking about the new podcast she's making with her ex-husband, they've called it The X-Files.

Latest government figures show another rise in the number of Education, Health and Care Plans or EHCPs in England. These are the legal documents that outline what support a child or young person with special educational needs is entitled to. So how can an already under pressure council cope with this increasing need? Well, we're gonna hear from one. And do you remember the conical bra worn by Madonna? Well, now Dua Lipa graces the front of this month's Vogue

in a blush satin version. Yes, the bullet bra is back. So will the rest of us be wearing one soon or is it just for the fashionistas? I wore this bra on the tube. I wore this bra to the office. I wore this bra on the street. I got some pretty strange looks on the Bakerloo nun, I've got to be honest. Yes, she did. Lots to get into. let's get started. First the Department of Education has this week released the latest figures that show another rise in the number of education health and care plans. Now these are the documents that outline what support a child with special

educational needs is entitled to. I was joined by the BBC's education reporter Kate McGoff, Jane Harris the vice chair of the Disabled Children's Partnership and CEO of Speech and Language UK, and Jackie Russell from West Sussex County Council who is their cabinet member for children, young people and learning. I began by asking Kate to talk me through the figures. Yeah, that's right. We just had these figures through in the last few minutes and they show that over 638,000 children and young people in England had an education, health and care

plan as of January this year. That's a 10% increase on the same time last year and it's the highest ever number. The applications for these type of plans have been rising every year since they were first introduced about a decade ago. They also show us that they're, so that's existing plans and kind of children and people that already have a plan. It showed they were also a big increase, a 10% increase in the number of new requests for plans, about 150,000 more new requests for this type of support. And crucially, it also shows that fewer than half of these EHCPs were issued within the 20-week deadline so we've got half of families who are waiting longer than they should for this

type of support. Was it expected we know the demand is growing but that's quite a leap isn't it? It is it has been it has been growing it grew at a similar rate last year so it isn't a massive jump and this time but I think you know what the government would say is that this is unsustainable in terms of the level of support. Previously, you know when EHCPs do require kind of extra funding and schools and councils say that they are struggling to kind of fulfil the obligations in these plans. I mean the government are kind of trying to emphasize that they would like to see more support within mainstream schools and potentially you know most support for special educational needs doesn't

involve the HCP. We've got about 1.7 million children in schools who are getting some support and these figures show we've got about 600,000 DHCPs. So most you know pupils don't have an DHCP but parents do find them a really valuable tool to kind of get that support that they are legally entitled to that these plans set out. Does have a government said anything about this particular increase or what are they saying generally about the situation? We've not heard back this morning about this increase but in the previously we had some special educational needs figures a couple of weeks ago and at that time they said that they are you know taking steps

to identify and meet children's needs earlier in mainstream schools and they've previously announced a 740 million investment to help mainstream schools adapt for children with special educational needs. But of course not every child can be educated in a mainstream school and about 30% of children with the HCPs are in special schools and about 10% aren't in school at all. We know the government is planning to publish a white paper in the autumn. There's pretty much a lot of concern about this from parents. So do we have any idea of what to expect? Why are people concerned about the changes that

could be coming? I think parents are concerned because you know getting an EHCP, getting one of these plans is a real battle for a lot of parents and I spoke to a mum yesterday who had been waiting 72 weeks to get her EHCP, she's just got it, so she's really concerned that if these reforms come in in the autumn, and we don't actually know yet what those reforms will be, but they haven't ruled out making changes to EHCP, the school's minister in previous interviews hasn't ruled that out, so there is a lot of concern that these EHCPP's are hard fought and they do set out legal entitlements. There's a bit of a worry that that support

might be harder to obtain but obviously the government has previously said they would like to see that support and these ECHP's are a vehicle for it and they would like to see the support potentially given in other ways. Yes because you said the suggestion is the government wants to focus on support for children with ECHPs in mainstream schools, but aren't really the majority of children already in mainstream schools who are being helped in this way? So that's what is what interesting about these stats.

And yeah, so actually about 43% of young people and children with EHCPs are in the mainstream school already. So that's the biggest proportion, you know, I think there would be a lot of concern among parents about what would replace that if that was to change. And also, I think that, you know, a lot of schools do their best, but I think that, you know, EHCPs do lay out a legal, if it's a legal document it spells out the entitlement that children can expect so I think parents would want similar levels of safeguards around what support their child could have. Just remind us of that figure would you of what the average should be if you apply for one of these EHCPs because I was just startled by that 72-week figure what should you be, what's the target?

It should be 20 weeks yes but it does vary across the country for different local authorities. And yeah, this one I spoke to yesterday was well over that. And a lot of people, a lot of parents are forced to go to a tribunal, aren't they, because their application gets knocked back. How many of those are successful? The vast majority of tribunals are successful. I think it's in the region of, you know, it's over 90% and I think that that is the thing. Even when you get an EHCP it could be that they're, you know, you might not agree with the support that's laid out in it, with the school that's named, and so you can challenge it through a tribunal process but obviously they can be long, arduous

and even though the vast majority of parents do win those tribunals, I think it can be quite a tough process. Good to have you on the program, Kate. Thank you so much for kicking us off. There's the BBC's education reporter, Kate McGoff. We have to say these figures are referring to England. In Scotland, the system is known as ASN, Additional Supports Needs. In Wales, it's ALN, Additional Learning Needs. And in Northern Ireland, it's known as the SEN register that's the special educational needs register. Wherever you're listening to us this morning do get in touch with us with your experience you can text 84844. Now we're going to bring in Jane Harris who is vice chair of the disabled children's partnership and CEO of

Speech and Language UK. Welcome Jane. No. I'm also going to be hearing from one particular council as well, West Sussex Council. Jackie Russell is their cabinet member for children and young people and learning because as we were just hearing councils are having a tough time of it meeting this need. Jackie, good morning. Morning. Jane, let's start with you. What do you make of these figures? 10% rise. I guess that's

no surprise to you. Absolutely not. It would be a massive surprise if these numbers were going in the opposite direction. Of course this is happening because we know that schools, nurseries and colleges are really woefully equipped to support children with special education needs, whether that's children with speech and language problems, children with autism, children with ADHD, a whole range of conditions. And that's because the teachers and the earlier staff simply do not have the training to support this group of children, and they tell us that over and over again. There's also a massive shortage of the specialists that really could help schools. There's a massive shortage of speech and language therapists, of occupational therapists, physiotherapists, educational psychologists. And the other thing

that's driving it like this, and I think Kate alluded to this a bit, is that the children who don't have these legally guaranteed plans, the education, health and care plans, they're put on a package called SEND support, special education lead support, and those children really get very, very little support. One of our members, the charity Contact, did some research on this, which found that if children who are on SEND support are very very unlikely to get what they need and actually 60% of those children start to avoid school. So actually we really need to make sure there are legal guarantees for children to get support whether they have an EHCP or whether they're on this lower form of support and that is not just good for those children it's good for their parents because if those children start to avoid school those parents aren't able to work in the same way but also it's good for their parents because if those children start to avoid school those parents aren't able to work in the same way, but also it's good for our economy

and we really need to wake up and reform the system but the way to do that is to put in more legal guarantees so that all children have the support they need not just the ones who get these plans. Are you worried then because we have this white paper coming down the line that that will be diluted, you keep talking about legal guarantees. Do you fear that changes could be coming which means it's harder to get one of these or not? They might change the criteria, the government, by which you are entitled to one. There's a huge amount of fear about that and I think we need to remember that this system goes back to the Thatcher government. So the Thatcher government recognised that children needed to have,

the children who are most vulnerable, the children with special education needs need extra guarantees to that support in school. And we are really worried about that. The government has said some positive things about making the system more inclusive, but we haven't seen those plans yet. I think one good way to think about this is to think,

if too many people are going to hospital, you don't cut off hospitals. You think, let's put in more GPs, let's put in more support at home, let's maybe put some more clinics in the community, but you don't close the hospitals because some people need to go to hospital. And it's similar that some children have complex needs and they need a huge variety of support. We run two schools at Speech and Language UK, the children who are on education, health and care plans, they will have speech and language challenges, but they will, some of them might need, for example, technology to be able to express themselves because they couldn't have a conversation like we're having today. But they also sometimes have epilepsy, they might have

autism, ADHD, attachment disorder, cerebral palsy. You need a plan to work out how to support a child with those needs. And Jane, you have a personal experience of this, don't you? You have a child with SEND provision and we've done this a lot on Women's Hour. Our audience tell us the whole system is broken. How has it impacted on your family and have you got the help that you need? We're on the way to getting the help that we need. My child has mostly been out of school for over a year. And I'm somebody, I've worked at this organization, I've previously worked in National Autistic Society.

You know, I know the system, but it's still extraordinarily difficult. And I would say, even when you have a plan, it's sometimes really difficult to get schools to do what is in that plan. We met Bridget Phillips a while ago, and I ended up talking to her at Leeds about the fact that it'd taken me almost a year to get my child's school to put in a trampoline that

costs £50 that an occupational therapist said he needed. Funnily enough his class teacher Neha says that actually all his classrooms should have that because she's seen the benefits had to him. So those are the kind of simple changes that we need schools to make but we also need to make sure that the plans are there for the children with the really complex needs. Let's bring in then Jackie Russell from West Sussex County Council. Jackie you've been in touch with the government haven't you because of the crippling financial pressure that is that this this whole provision for SEND is putting on your local authority. How bad has it got? Since March 2015 when the reforms came in on the Sen Code of Practice, West Sussex had

3423 children with an EHCP. Today we have 9986. And I'm actually quite amazed to hear that there's been an increase of 10% across the board. I'm guessing that is a national average because in the last 12 months we've seen a 72% increase in requests compared to 64% in the last 12 months and you know what that equates to so far this academic year for West Sussex is that we've received 1986 requests which is 19.9% higher than the same period in 2023-24 and although 60% have been agreed to proceed, which is 32% increase on the same period last year. So that kind of gives you an idea of the increasing pressure against what are, as has already been outlined, extremely limited resources,

putting massive pressure on council budgets, you know, which, you know, the majority of us are holding significant deficits that we need the government to address. I know that Jane's organisation has done significant research into the amount of money that councils are spending in tribunals. Jane, do you just want to come back in and tell us a little bit about that because there's a lot of challenge that goes on here, isn't there? I think the first thing that's really important to say is it's not parents who usually request these plans, it's usually schools and nurseries. But I think sometimes people think that it's families putting pressure on the system. Families absolutely want the best outcomes for their

children, but it's schools and nurseries who are really saying that we're not we're not able to cope with this child's needs, we need more support. But on the tribunal question, so we know that over 95% of cases in tribunal are won by the parents, so basically if the parents, if the family thinks actually, the council have said my child doesn't need this plan and I disagree, or they think we've got a plan that actually doesn't really explain what my child needs, or if the plan says your child can go to this school and parents let out tax, you know, the right school for them, they can go through to the tribunal. That's a really important right and that's the kind of legal guarantee we want to have in place but it should be a backstop. Fewer people should need to go to the tribunal because the support should be there.

Let me bring Jackie back in to answer that then Jackie. The allegation is a lot of money has been wasted or spent by local authorities challenging these decisions that are often made these recommendations that come from schools, not from the parents themselves. Is that where some of the waste could be trimmed? I wouldn't say that it was waste. That is quite correct that the majority of referrals do come from schools and we know we obviously go through the assessment process and we get to the point where we need to finalise their plan and agree the needs that have been identified by the specialists that have

put the plan together and often with us it comes down to agreeing the placement and you know there will be parents that for whatever reason will want their child to go to a specific school. Now that school a may not be what the the placement and you know there will be parents that for whatever reason will want their child to go to a specific school. Now that school may not be what the specialist consider meets the need of that child or actually as is the case in West Sussex in terms of special schools is already unbelievably oversubscribed because we simply do not have enough provision. So what happens is the parents will go to the tribunal and it's quite correct in West Sussex we have 97% of tribunal applications actually are successful. So it pretty much undermines the local authority and it puts massive pressure

again on the authorities budgets. Hence why we do need the government now to step in and That's Jackie Russell, Jane Harris and Kate McGoff. Christiane Amanpour has been at the forefront of international news for more than 40 years, reporting from all over the world as a journalist and war reporter, as well as being CNN's chief international anchor, steering the helm of several programmes including CNN International's nightly interview programme, Ammanpour, and also the Ammanpour Hour. She's now added another string to her bow and has launched a podcast. Christian Ammanpour presents V-Files with Jamie Rubin. It's a weekly foreign affairs show co-hosted by Jamie, a former US diplomat and Assistant Secretary

of State and also her ex-husband. I spoke to her on Wednesday after the annual NATO Summit in The Hague and I began by asking Christiane how she felt about seeing so little progress on the number of women in leading positions of power around the world. Well, on that front, it does bother me a lot because I genuinely believe that women have a different, not better, not worse, but a different way of thinking, of making policy, and some with a lot of empathy in that women can often see problems in a win-win way rather than a zero-sum game which means if I win you have to lose and I think this is crucial and I actually just got the whole download on that from the former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who resigned before her

term was up and has written a book now on a new form of leadership and I've talked to many women leaders including Christine Lagarde, who was the first female head of the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. She's now head of the ECB, the European Central Bank, and she was a finance minister, the first woman in France. And I asked her about what it meant to be a woman leader, and she's a brilliant English speaker but she said, well, you know, when we're negotiating around a table with the men, it's all about their libido. And I think she meant really the testosterone effect, how with men it can often be this, this just sort of, it's my

way or the highway. And we're seeing that too much. And many women do have a different kind of vision of leadership. and I think it needs to be included and incorporated in leadership. It doesn't mean we have only women or only men but there needs to be a better path for women to be leaders and just having said that women as you know when they do dare to stick their heads above the parapet for political office they are tortured and decimated on social media for no good reason whatsoever. It's a misogynistic world.

Well, get into the machismo and how that might play into what's going on in the Middle East right now. And that is front and centre, that topic of your new podcast, the recent episodes with your ex-husband Jamie Rubin, The X-Files. Whose idea was it to start this? Well, it was mine. Gosh. You know, I wanted to get into the digitization space, and I had this wonderful meeting with the head of podcasts at Global, who I'm doing this with,

and we just kicked around some ideas, and I sort of really threw it out as a maybe, would it work? I hadn't even any idea, I hadn't really sort of threw it out as a maybe, would it work? I hadn't even any idea, hadn't really asked Jamie about it. We'd been married for some 20 years. We have a son. We've been divorced for seven years now. But as he says, and I say, foreign policy discussions were never our problem. We really loved to talk foreign policy and, you know, it was always robust conversations. Usually we

kind of were on the same page, but in certain situations we weren't. And certain very, you know, difficult situations like parts of the Middle East, parts of Iran, all those files, you know, we had some differing opinions on. And I just thought really that, look, and this is before the current explosion of war in the Middle East, given that war is the dominant theme now, and it just is, do you hear people talking about peace? Do you hear people talking about diplomacy? Do you hear people talking about how to resolve it? No, it's all about war and who's going to win and then what happens. And I've covered it enough in my life. I have literally been 35 years on the front line.

And so we thought, I thought, it would be great to try to bring in some of that experience. He was a government official for the Clintons at that time in the 90s. My experience on the front lines, our joint experience from different perspectives and see if we could remember what happened then, some of it good, a lot of it bad, and see whether we could project it forward in terms of lessons learned and even solutions that we could bring up. And you very much pictured as two people have put whatever personal differences they had aside to come together and try and work through this tangle of world events, as you say, at a very hot period in our world's history.

Are you setting yourself up as role models in that sense? Because that can't be easy to do. It's a very good question. I had not thought about that. But if we can in the parlance model something, I do think it's important. Certainly for children, I cannot tell you how pleased our son is that we're doing this. Not that he was brought into the decision-making process. But I think that for people, individuals, it's, you know, it's not always possible. Sometimes, you know, divorces are along such

bitter and, you know, sometimes terrible things have happened and it's very difficult to be, you know, civil going forward. But I do think if you can, it's important to be able to find that space and model it, because not everything has to be a perpetual war or a perpetual division. And most particularly, if you sort of extrapolate that and talk about today's politics and policy making, it's all about war. I mean, literally, people are at each other's throats. I mean, you know, families are practically at war around a dinner table if they disagree

on this policy or that policy. Certainly in America, around the current administration, certainly I remember here over Brexit, and many, many other issues. The current Middle East crisis, it's dividing so many people. So this is not just a personal thing. It's a deeply divided, partisan world that we live live in and unfortunately aided and abetted by the algorithms of social media which exist in order to create conflict and to create

clickbait. So it's our little, my little way, our little way of trying to make a dent in that. Christiane Amanpour speaking to me this week and episodes of The X-Files are out weekly. She was the epitome of elegance. She was the epitome of mystery, intrigue and beauty. One of the 20th century's most amazing characters, a Hollywood sex symbol whose story you might think you already know. Hedy Lamarr, the film star, but there's another side to her story. She was an inventor at heart. Her scientific contribution, no other star has been able to match.

We really should put her into the limelight she deserves. From the BBC World Service, Untold Legends, Hedy Lamarr. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Yesterday, the program came live from Glastonbury. One musician in this year's Worthy Farm line-up is self-esteem, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, who's been performing on the Park stage. Rebecca started out as one half of the band, Slow Club,

before launching her solo career as self-esteem with the single Your Wife back in 2017. In 2021 she won the BBC Music Introducing Artist of the Year award, then achieved a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize in 2022 with Prioritised Pleasure. More recently Rebecca has performed the lead role of Sally Bowles in the West End production of Cabaret. And Self Esteem has a new album out. It's called A Complicated Woman. Ahead of Self Esteem's performance at Glastonbury, Anita caught up with her to ask her how she was feeling

and what she had in store for the Glastonbury audience. Very excited. I love Anoni and the Johnson, so I'm very excited for that bit because I'll be able to relax. But yeah, I'm going to do my, well, I'm going to try and do my theatre show version of the gig, completely different size stage and with half the things I need. But I think it's, yes, I think it's going to be fantastic. That's what I'm going to say about that. It is going to be fantastic. I think we should give a shout out to your ensemble that's going to be on stage with you. Who have you got with you?

Well, it's very long. There's 15 of us. Oh, right. What about your backing singers? Who have you got? There's 11 backing singers. Amazing. Just shout out to my sisters. Yeah, they're all amazing. And I think it's quite a lot of people's first Glastonbury's it's I hope they have a good time. Well last time you were there so many things to talk about iconic in many ways not least because the audience were barking at you yes hoping for that again yeah that again for sure. I will be singing along

with The Curse. Yes okay obviously it's Radio 4 Rebecca but for those people who don't know what about The Curse, can you tell us a little bit about that song? Yeah, it's a song I wrote about sort of alcohol and vices, I suppose. Anything you do that isn't amazing for you, but it helps, right? And it works. And it's quite a hard song to write because I feel like in society we've fed a sort of sobriety is the right thing to do and absolutely what you should be doing or like cheers, we, here's the weekend, let's go kind of thing. And there's no middle ground. And I think that's why,

you know, I've certainly struggled with it over the years to find moderation and a middle ground because yeah, there is none. So it's a song about trying to figure that out, which does not sound like a big pop song, but I think it is. But how cathartic, how wonderful was it to be able to get those words out when you were recording it? I think I saw a clip on Instagram of the backing singers in a studio, the choir singing the chorus, gospel choir as well, immense. It's wonderful. Like it's still, I struggle with a lot of things in the job and certainly the bigger it gets and the more sort of visible I get, the more stressful some of it is. But

then there's those moments where you've had something in your head and you get it out and then it's to fruition. That's like the best feeling in the world. And then you put it into the mouths of like people that can sing so good and it is like the highest of highs it's heaven. Why are you expecting people to bark? For the uninitiated people don't know why your audience bark at you. I have a song on my last album, Prioritize Pleasure, called I'm Fine, which includes a sound bite from a theatre workshop I did with a load of young women, female identifying people. I clipped it from that and it says, she says about how when her and her friends walk home, they pretend to be dogs and they bark at sort of men that

are sort of giving them, you know, catcalling them or whatever. Because people just think you're mad and there's nothing more terrifying than a mad woman is there. So we all bark together. You were casting Cabaret alongside Jake Shears from Scissor Sisters. How did that experience of being in musical theatre shape what you're doing now? Personally as a performer, I don't know how much it changed. I've always loved even when I was like in an indie band like playing tiny bars, I always

felt like Elaine Page, you know I mean like I always feel like it's drama and it's there and I'm in it. So it wasn't like I suddenly was like acting but what I took from it so much and have taken with me is the like the infrastructure it's not very romantic but like the way theatre is run there are the right amount of people to check that everything's going to go smoothly. They care about how you are. There are rules. If something's not OK, you can ring someone and complain. Like in music, it's so unregulated.

There is no, you know, no one is helping you make sure you can get to the stage until you're at a level where you can pay someone to do that. So I took like I literally took one of the stage managers with me. I worked with a theatre designer on my new show. I'm just sort of pushing the music industry to, you know, to change for me first and then let's see if we can do it for everyone else. But yeah, I'd love to do more theatre. I loved it. And it was a holiday from me. Like I'm emotional as me in self-esteem, but getting to be emotional as Sally was

weirdly calming. Yeah. What a fantastic character to get to play. And Madonna came to see you. That was for the new album. Yeah. My manager, her face was quite interesting on the day that she was coming and saw a guest and then I saw her and we we we've chatted on message yeah she's amazing I mean it truly the reason I got the courage to leave the band was I got really into Madonna like really the documentaries read the book and and honestly I woke up and left and so that's the band Slow Club yeah it's not like celebrities coming to see you is really fun I always love it but she her coming it was so powerful it's not like celebrities coming to see you is really fun. I always love it. But she her coming it was so powerful. It's why I exist. I have nodded to her relentlessly.

Self esteem talking to Anita there she's performing at Glastonbury this weekend and you can hear more of our Glastonbury coverage by going to BBC sounds and searching from Friday the 27th of June. Now as we just heard, self-esteem, bit of a fan of the bullet bra and that iconic silhouette was made famous of course by movie stars like Marilyn Monroe, revisited in the hit drama Mad Men and reinvented by Madonna in those Jean Paul Gaultier corsets. It recently made a return to the catwalk and onto the cover of British Vogue, whose July issue features the singer Dua Lipa sporting a blush satin muu muu creation. However, here's the question, will it make it onto the high street? Could we be persuaded to ditch our t-shirt bras in favour of the bullet bra 2.0?

Earlier this week on Woman's Hour, I was joined in the studio by Karolina Leskowska, a lingerie designer and director of the Underpinnings Museum, an online archive documenting women's underwear from the 18th century to the current day, and also by Julia Hobbs, British Vogue's contributing senior fashion features editor who recently road tested the bullet bra for the magazine. I began by asking Julia to describe the bra for us and tell us where and how she wore it. Well, I'm actually wearing a bullet bra right now for our listeners at home. I am. And you didn't notice.

No, I didn't notice. Okay, so the Miu Miu bra appeared on the runway. It was shown at Paris Fashion Week back in February and it's part of the Autumn Winter 25 collection. And this gives you a kind of insight as to the trends that are coming in. This bra was a thing of great beauty. And when we saw it on the runway, I thought, okay, I have to see this thing. I have to try it out in real life and see how it fares in reality. So it ended up on my desk. And sure enough, it was pinched off my desk and sent to the photoshoot, which became the cover image of Dua Lipa on this month's issue of Vogue and really that image struck us all in how strong she looks and I really love that image of

Dua Lipa where she has her gorgeous kind of sculpted physique and she looks very powerful. I wore this bra on the tube, I wore this bra to the office, I wore this bra on the street, I got some pretty strange looks on the Bakerloo line, I've got to be honest. How did you wear it? How did you style it? I wore it on top of a gingham shirt and it definitely attracted some looks. I did that because I wanted to see the reaction. You know, this was scientific research, all in the name of fashion journalism.

Men and women? Men and women, really strange looks. People I think would glare at it and then avert their eyes very swiftly. My colleagues, who I'm very close to luckily, kind of booped it like you would a Labrador's nose, the points. Nice. But as, and I did feel daft,

but then as the day wore on and I went to go out that evening after road testing in the office, I wore underneath a very simple white vest, which is probably something that a lot of your listeners have in their wardrobe. And at that moment, I felt like I was wearing it for myself. It felt very purposeful. I caught a glimpse of my silhouette and I loved that it was taking up space and felt quite angular and it was unusual. Yeah, I mean, I thought the whole purpose of this was to actually show it off, not cover it up. I could see you've got it on now, but is that not, you know, we think back to Madonna and I said, you're a leaper and Sabrina Carpenter and people like that who are very much got

the kind of laundry on the outside again. Is that not the point of this kind of statement? I think you can wear it how you like and exactly as you say we have these phenomenal women in pop music, Charlie XCX, Lorde, Sabrina Carpenter, who will perform in underwear or pieces that look like underwear. There's a real power to that. It's reclaiming sexuality, it's owning sexuality. These are really formidable women who are using underwear to demonstrate strength, I think, not titillation. Caroline, let's bring you in. Do you think that's the point of something like this? It's very structured, it's a real statement. It's not the same as kind of maybe putting something on that it's a little bit more, I don't know more titillating for the male or female gaze? Well I personally think that something like the bullet bra it's not really for the male, the revival I mean, it is not for the male

gaze. It is something that we're not used to seeing, we're not used to that silhouette anymore, that it is something that I think is a very very powerful thing that someone can wear for themselves and what I think is also really interesting we're talking about this trend coming back, we're seeing it on the runway, the bra is being worn as a piece of outerwear, it's being worn designed to be seen. When we think back to the origins of the bullet bra, which was kind of the mid 20th century, maybe a little bit earlier, the purpose of that was to support the fashionable outer clothing of the time. That's such a

big difference, I think, in how this trend has come around. The focus is on the bra, not on supporting the outer clothes. Yeah and it's interesting isn't it because I think Lana Turner was the first film star to wear it. Marilyn Monroe of course famously. So that was to accentuate what you're saying, Carolina, the female physique underneath the clothing and we've seen it in Mad Men recently as well but that's not what's happening here. I don't think so. I think this is more so than ever in history I think one of the wonderful things about beautiful lingerie now is that people more and

more are wearing it for themselves. It's for their own self-expression, it's for their own, you know, celebration of self self. And at the end of the day, these are just stunningly beautiful objects. When I was looking at photos of this Miu Miu bra earlier, and it's just so beautifully constructed, it's a piece of couture. Is that how you see it, Julia? Well, the interesting thing

is that when this was shown on the runway, it was very unexpected. And as Carolina says, I think there's a new generation that's looking at this bra with and through a new lens it means something different and there was a very interesting quote from Mrs. Prada backstage at the show where she talked about these objects of femininity so the bra the brooch and she also did stoles and she spoke about these as a kind of comment on fashion in times of war and there was a very wartime look and feel

to that show. I mean there's a lot of kind of socio-political foldings that go into our underpinnings. Julia Hobbs from Vogue there and Karolina Leskowska from the Underpinnings Museum joining me earlier in the week. That's all from me. Have a lovely weekend. She was the epitome of elegance. She was the epitome of mystery, intrigue and beauty. One of the 20th century's most amazing characters. A Hollywood sex symbol whose story you might think you already know.

Hetty Lamar, the film star. But there's another side to her story. She was an inventor at heart. Her scientific contribution, no other star has been able to match. We really should put her into the limelight she deserves. From the BBC World Service, Untold Legends, Hetty Lamarr. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.