bra

A couple of clever readers have suggested that I do some sort of round-up of the best bras available and I thought it was a really great idea. I think it will be helpful for anyone who isn’t sure where to start with properly fitted bras or new knowledge of their shape, or for anyone struggling to build a basic collection. I’m trying to cover all the bases here. Let me know what I missed! I’ve distinguished in some categories between bras that give a ‘purple shape’ and bras that give a ‘green shape’. I’ve also tried to distinguish between bras for full-on-top boobs and full-on-bottom boobs wherever relevant. Bras I’ve honored for shapes other than my own are based on the experiences of bloggers, forum members, and friends with different shapes than mine. Bras lost points for things like crappy band construction and problems that plague almost everyone. (That’s why you don’t see the Cleo Lucy on here, even though it’s a personal favorite—the band is at a stupidly high angle and the...

The Fantasie Esme’s claim to fame is its ‘center-pull straps’—essentially, the location of the straps has been modified so they are closer together in the back. This is useful for women with narrow shoulders who find straps usually slide off. It’s also a nice alternative to having straps sit in the exact same place every day. The Esme is also part of a small group of molded Fantasie bras which are, in my opinion, rather underrated and under-reviewed. So when I got a chance to try the Esme in a store, I snapped a couple photos so I could review it. Like the Fantasie Smoothing (4520), the Esme is MOLDED but NOT PADDED. The concept of this confused me before I had tried it, but it essentially just means that the fabric itself has been molded into a seamless shape. A molded AND padded bra would have foam as well as fabric molded into the shape; however, although they’re often synonymous, padding doesn’t need to be part of a molded bra. I tried the Esme in a 30H. I’d say it runs fairly...

I've been eager to try Panache's new Envy bra. Being based on their extremely successful Jasmine bra, I figured it would be a good one. However, I heard initial reports that it was different from the Jasmine, so I was worried it wouldn't deliver. However, this weekend I got the chance to try the Envy in a store and I was blown away by how great it is. I haven't tried the Jasmine (shameful, I know) so I can't report back on the differences, but I can say that this is a great bra that I'd highly recommend. Here's the front view. Like the Jasmine and its ancestor, the Andorra, the Envy has a modified full-cup construction with a side support panel and stretchy upper section. The combination of the uplifting side support and the stretch in the top means that these bras don't suffer from the problems that regular full-cup bras have. However, I still get a very slightly pointed shape in the Andorra full cup. That was NOT the case in the Envy: This is one of th...

When it comes to bra fitting, I have a philosophy of independence. I want myself and all women to know their shape and what fits them without needing to rely on commercial interests for that advice. I also want myself and all women to be free from the sometimes tiny constraints of the full-bust market--that is, I want us to be able to work with what is available, even when it is not good, to move  past the limitations of the market so we can get what we need. That is why I am an advocate of knowing how to sew--sewing is power, and if you know how, your bra world opens up to include models that wouldn't otherwise work for you. Sewing and alteration enable us to improve fit faster than the glacially slow evolutions of the brands themselves. For those of us who wear smaller band sizes, we often find ourselves frustrated that the bras we want don't go up to high enough cup sizes. You need to go up a cup size to keep the same volume when you go down a band size, but most bras cut of...