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Small band, large cup bras. Do they work for anyone?
After having one bad bra day too many, and also spending lots of time lurking around here and Reddit's r/abrathatfits and seeing how well bras actually fit on some people, I feel as though there's a lot left lacking in terms of bras with small bands (32 or less) and large cups (HH and greater). Aside from the total desert in bras greater than a J in a 28 band, and the fact that the only brand who makes bras greater than a UK K cup (I'm definitely well into that territory now) is Ewa Michalak , I just feel like most of the bras aren't that great. It's pretty common to have wires which are too wide or alternatively too high (or sometimes both), cups which wrinkle at the bottom, straps which are far too wide and cut into your armpit, the side of the bra outside the straps comes up so high that it's incredibly visible through your arm hole, and lots of other issues which seem to be unique to this size range, especially right up the top. Bratabase's comments and entries seem to back me up on this supposition.
There's also a real lack of choice. I mean, I need to wear a bra (the other option isn't really very socially acceptable, or comfortable), so I have to choose between the lesser of evils and I'm at home trying to somehow stuff my definitely not 28K breasts into a 28K bra which still has wires far too wide for me despite my extra breast tissue distorting the bra and pulling it forward while I wait on an EM custom and hope that I haven't exceeded their size range as well. Even for people who aren't actually off the top of the cup scale, the amount of bras available are very limited, and I wonder how many others in small bands large cups really feel like they can't find a bra which fits them perfectly and have to settle for the least undesirable option? For instance, when I was a 28K I could chose from Panache, who has insanely high wires, Curvy Kate who has insanely wide wires or EM where I never know how long the back of the bra is until I get it and I can't send it back if it's wrong. In an ideal world, I'd may wear a 26 band as well, but apparently that's not a size which is profitable for companies to make even in smaller cups.
If you're around this size territory have you noticed the poor design of bras or are you happy with yours? Are there any changes that you'd like to make? Do you think that it would be possible to create a lobby to actually improve the design of bras in this size?
Filed under Bra sizing and fit
6 comments
I wear a 28GG/H, so not really the bra desert that occurs a couple cup sizes up, but my little sister wears around a 28J/30HH, and helping her to find bras has been a challenge.
They're all cut wrong, with not NEARLY enough depth, far too wide wires and the cups too far apart, so her gore NEVER tacks, and there's always some weird gapping and bunching around the edges of the cup. She's not to keen on EM, both for the non-refundable crapshoot reasons, and because she doesn't want the really cleavagey, projected look that EM bras give. Our next experiment is going to be in Frankensteining bras for her by cutting the cups out of bras in my size (which have the right wire width and band size for her) and sewing in deeper cups.
I never ordered an EM until now, mostly for those reasons. I like to know how my bra fits wrong before I buy it. XD I've thought about making a Frankenbra, but I cleaned out all of my old ones so I'd need to get the wire from somewhere else, and the ones at my local sewing shop are woefully inadequate (I think the longest was 26cm and I'd really want something closer to 36). I'm not sure where I can source some which won't cost a small fortune. If you were clever, you could probably just run the 28H wires into the 28J bra's channels as an initial test to see whether that gives the depth and projection she's looking for. It may make the bra a bit smaller in the band, especially considering the percentage of these bras which is made up by the underwire, but it would be an easy way of seeing if the shape works as both bras would be a total bust after making these kinds of structural alterations anyway.
t_maia was saying that if there's enough interest, we could probably talk to the people who do Contour Fashion at Demontfort University to see if we could bribe them into designing stuff. This is more of a ramble but I am hoping to turn the ramble into action at some point.
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