Are women really flocking to surgeons to get their breasts reduced simply
because they haven’t had the correct bra fitted? According to the British
Medical Association, “many women requesting breast reduction surgery are
wearing bra sizes several times too small”. It goes on to recommend that
“the services of bra fitters should be available on the NHS as the first
step in the referral for breast-reduction surgery”.
Perhaps the BMA needs to get out more. There are lovely, capable ladies up and
down the land with admirable bra-fitting skills and, incredibly, they don’t
charge a penny. They can be found in many stores, striding around
purposefully with tape measures and practised eyes in areas known (in
layman’s terms) as the Underwear (or more often, Lingerie) Department.
Still, one sympathises with the BMA. Professor Kefah Mokbel, a consultant
breast surgeon at St George’s and the Princess Grace hospitals in London,
says: “In one study we found 100 per cent were wearing the wrong bra. They
tend to underestimate the back size and overestimate the cup.” Which is
interesting, because when theTimesfashion team went out last week to test
some fitters, we found what seems to be a trend among bra manufacturers to
produce bras that do indeed boast generous cup sizes and slender backs. What
is this? A conspiracy of flattery, designed to console the beleaguered
British woman, who is constantly being told how much fatter than her
mother’s generation she is becoming?
Still, the breast does seem to be changing. The human race may be evolving at
a fantastically slow pace (especially that part of it relating to the
brain), but no one appears to have told women’s breasts. According to Marks &
Spencer, the UK average breast size has swelled from 34B to 36C in five
years. At this rate, by the end of the century we’ll look back at Jordan and
wonder how she could have been a sex symbol and so flat-chested. Diet and
oestrogen in the water supply may account for some of the changes, but
plastic surgery (breast augmentation and reduction are the most popular
operations, accounting for more than 25 per cent of all cosmetic procedures)
is having a huge impact, not just on the women who have it, but on those who
don’t.
“The increase in breast surgery is a huge challenge to the bra industry,” says
Soozie Jenkinson, the head of lingerie design at M&S, “because enhanced
breasts are very different shapes from real ones.” And yet, for many younger
women, surgically enhanced breasts are increasingly an aspiration. Le
Mystère no 9, a U-shaped bra with a much higher bust point than the
traditional version, has been designed specifically for women who have
undergone breast enlargement. It’s already a bestseller in Harrods.
Whereas 20 years ago the ideal female was athletic and slightly flat-chested,
now she’s athletic and pneumatic. Teenage girls no longer hunch their
shoulders to try to make their breasts look smaller, as they did when I was
young. In the bra-burning 1970s the breast was not fetishised as it is now,
at least not by women, and certainly not by fashion. The catwalk ideal then
was a sinuous, etiolated streak with endless legs (Twiggy in Biba, Jerry
Hall in Halston). Nowadays fashion wants it all: lean, toned legs and arms,
zero body fat – except around the breast area which is now a miracle of
surplus firm flesh. And teenage girls no longer wear extra-large V-neck
jumpers from the men’s department. Instead, they throw their shoulders
back and hoik themselves into fetching vests, camisoles and all-singing,
all-dancing padded, underwired bras that display their goods to maximum
effect. When did that happen?
The seeds were probably sewn in 1994, when the Czech model Eva Herzigova
literally stopped traffic with her “Hello Boys” ad for Wonderbra. The
billboards caused a media sensation and although no one noticed at the time,
set the blueprint for a new silhouette: snake-hipped, muscular, and
spectacularly well endowed. Concurrently Dolce & Gabbana, Versace and
Cavalli came into the ascendant, all of them designers who – unlike Chanel,
Armani and Comme des Garçons, the triumvirate that ruled 1980s fashion –
worshipped the female mammary gland in its fullest incarnation. Corsetry
came back into vogue for the first time in 40 years. And thanks to Madonna,
who was one of the first to flaunt Jean Paul Gaultier’s tongue-in-cheek,
exaggerated breast cones, they had an ironic, postfeminist message.
So here we are in 2007, and bras, 100 years after their inception, are still
an excellent retail item. In fact, women now buy three to four a year as
opposed to the more frugal two to three of old. And today technology (and
comfort) is the name of the game The bra, which in its earliest days was
cobbled together from handkerchiefs and wire, is a complex marriage of
design and engineering, the focus of at least as much zeal as went into
splitting the atom. There are bras you can pump up for added va-va-voom;
bras that can be levered up and down, not unlike drawbridges, to provide the
requisite amount of pillowy cleavage, bras that use flexiwire – a
lightweight wire that bends like titanium but is made from bamboo yarn – to
provide the ultimate shock absorbers for joggers. The bra has come a very
long way since the 1920s, when Dunlop Rubber’s chemists came up with a
strong elastic thread converted from raw latex that could be knitted into an
elastic fabric of any shape, width and size.
A plunging wired bra with pads and cross elastics requires up to 50 separate
processes to produce, a “simple” wire moulded bra a mere 20. As a rule, the
larger the bra, the more complicated its construction. “The heavier the
breast, the firmer the fit and the more supportive the back elastic must
be,” says David Morris, the principal lecturer on contour area for De
Montfort University’s lingerie and swimwear design course in Leicestershire
(the world’s only bra-engineering course, though that’s surely just a matter
of time). He adds: “As sizes increase, the fabric becomes more reinforced.
At the top end of the size scale, bras are 60 to 70 per cent rigid, with 20
to 30 per cent stretch.”
Then there is the mathematical feat that is the wired bra. “Wires must fit
very exactly to the base of the breast, as opposed to sitting halfway up,”
says Morris. “When you put on a wired bra the elastication opens up the wire
to fit the outline of the breast. With more tension, the wire becomes wider,
moulding to the tension at the back of the bra.”
Wires, though, are a contentious issue. At one time they were alleged to
inflame glands in the breast, possibly leading to cancer, though no links
have been found. But the curse of the errant wire that pokes through its
fabric casing and into flesh – or a wire that’s simply too tight, causing
severe discomfort which some women interpret as a sign that they need breast
reduction – means that the search for comfortable alternatives is on.
“Underwiring has been sold as a universal panacea for support,” says Morris,
but a plus-size woman might be better served by a non-wired bra.
Alison Price, a senior lecturer at De Montfort, says: “Seam-free technology is
an interesting area. Bonded rather than sewn bras are easier, cheaper and
faster to make, which makes them attractive to retail buyers. Moulded and
padded bras are increasingly popular and are huge in America. Manufacturers
are also looking at breast implants for bras. Le Mystère has just brought
out an implant bra. It’s an exciting market.”
At the Triumph spring/summer 2007 show in Japan (I discovered a parallel
universe of bra-exposure while researching this), Triumph Japan showed a No
More Plastic Bags bra, featuring folded-up, reuseable shopping bags within
the bra caps, which function as padding. When the bra isn’t being worn it
can be reassembled into a shopping bag. I think this is a piece of ethical
grandstanding rather than a serious proposal, for although the increasingly
popular Modal is an environmentally friendly fabric, made from sustainable
wood pulp, no one has yet come up with eco-fastenings.
Still, good old Triumph for trying. Good old Le Mystère. And good old M&S
for finally banishing those pointy cone bras – surely a relic from the
lift-and-separate torpedos of the 1950s – and replaced them with rounded,
pre-formed cups. “There’s a revolution going on,” says Soozie Jenkinson.
“Bras are being made without traditional stitching, using seam-free
technology and eliminating traditional elastics.” She adds: “The industry is
talking about bras that can mould to an individual’s shape, and bras that
tone and even enhance the breast fibre.” Another innovation is a bra that
moisturises the skin.
However, not all our testers love these dome-shaped bras that are rapidly
becoming ubiquitous – proving perhaps, that one size, or shape, does not,
fortunately, fit all. Yet.
100 YEARS OF THE BRA
1907 The word “brassiere” first appears in US Vogue
1913 The American socialite Mary Phelps Jacob makes her own from two
silk hankies and some ribbon. She is granted the first US bra patent the
following year
1935 Warner’s creates the cup-size system
1957 Howard Hughes designs a seamless push-up bra for Jane Russell to
wear in The Outlaw. Russell later claims she never wore it
1959 DuPont invents Lycra stretchy fibre
1967 Triumph’s Doreen bra goes on sale. It is still the bestseller
1977 Hinda Miller, Lisa Lindahl and Polly Smith create the first sports
bra
1997 Italian manufacturer Santoni develops a machine that allows a bra
to be made in one piece
Source: figleaves.com
MYLA
Alice visits Myla: sexy underwear, silk peach and ivory bra, £99 (0870
7455003)
Considering that I am not overendowed in the breast department, but still want
to feel sexy, I went to Myla with high hopes. I was disappointed. The
fitting service consisted of a rather unhelpful woman and a tape measure –
which, given that bra prices start at about £80 a pop, was annoying. My
size, the assistant said, was a 30D – three cup sizes bigger than I’ve been
told in the past. The problem was, that size had been discontinued, as had
the 30C that she also suggested. The 32B (her third suggestion) did not fit.
4/10
Alice Olins
RIGBY & PELLER
Carolyn visits Rigby & Peller: wedding underwear, peach bra, £86.95 (0845
0765545)
Aside from the deli-style queue – customers are given numbers, then have to
wait 20 minutes – the process was speedy and efficient: I walked out with my
purchase (my best-fitting bra ever) in five minutes. The sales assistant was
helpful and knowledgeable, measuring me (with her fingers) and explaining
what a properly fitted bra looks like on. I had three to try from various
labels. My only gripe? I found one of the bras at other stores for about £5
less, so the mark-up is quite high.
9/10
Carolyn Asome
BRAVISSIMO
Nicola goes to Bravissimo: sky blue balconette bra, £24 (01926 459800)
Looking for a bra to fit an ample bosom and a small back isn’t as easy as it
sounds, as most of those on the high street won’t budge to anything beyond a
DD. Thank goodness for Bravissimo, which caters purely for bigger busts. The
assistants measure you simply by looking at your chest, then bring bras to
meet your taste to the well-lit and very private changing rooms, and make
you aware that your size may differ by brand. The variety of bras is immense
and all are within an affordable price range.
9/10
Nicola Copping
MARKS & SPENCER
Carola goes to M&S: Multiway bra, £14 (0845 3021234)
I headed to M & S on Oxford Street for a bra that could be strapless,
halterneck or one-shouldered. The store was a shambles (it was being
refurbished) but the fitting room was well lit. The assistant was attentive,
but measured me as a 34B; I’m usually a 32D. She brought moulded-cup bras in
32B, 32C, 34A and 34B, saying that strapless bras must be tight to stay up.
The bras were inexpensive, and there was a wide selection, of which two fit
fairly well. But I was confused about my size and bought nothing.
6/10
Carola Long
HOUSE OF FRASER
Toral visits House of Fraser: Royce mastectomy bra, £19 (0870 1607270)
Having a mastectomy after an implant reconstruction last year has made
lingerie shopping harder than usual, but the service at House of Fraser was
thoughtful and knowledgeable. The assistant knew my size by looking at me;
she suggested several labels for every day and something more special. After
Eden bras with inbuilt gel padding to even out my different breasts were
great. I fell in love with a black lace balconette bra (£42) from Chantelle
that covered enough to hide my lack of nipple and made me feel sexy.
10/10
Toral Shah
JOHN LEWIS
Antonia goes to John Lewis: Elle Macpherson maternity bra, £32 (08456 049049)
Three months into my pregnancy and my breasts are swelling at a rate of knots.
My normal bras give me cleavage that would make Jordan jealous, so I head to
John Lewis. After a half-hour wait, the helpful assistant measured me with a
tape, then suggested a wireless sports bra – which surprised me, but
apparently they give good support and are very comfortable. Unfortunately,
none of the sports bras was particularly attractive (unlike the maternity
one shown above), but they fitted well and were very reasonable.
7/10
Antonia MacWhannell
