Come on ladies, admit it – you’ve got at least one poorly-fitting bra in your drawer that you wish you hadn’t wasted your money on. Now it’s time to, ahem, get it off your chest and start expecting a better bra-fitting service.
In February our researchers went shopping to get fitted for an everyday bra – and the results were depressing.
Admittedly, this test went beyond the usual call of duty for our researchers, and it would be easy to see it as a laughing matter, but our research really brought it home that buying a bra is serious business.
We found that fewer than one in three bra fitting services measured up and a quarter of fittings were so bad that our experts gave them a zero score. This provided a pretty similar picture to the one we found back in 2004, and I have to admit that, as the lead researcher, I had little confidence things would change.
But I’m hoping that I’ll get to utter those rare words: ‘I was wrong’, because scientists and retailers have now got together to set up the Bra Retailers Association on the back of our findings.
Its laudable aim is for retailers to work together to make the marketplace less confusing for consumers, and ultimately, it wants to create a national bra fitting standard and quality mark.
So will it all be a storm in a D-cup? I hope not because, quips aside, this is a genuine issue. Poor-fitting bras lead to health problems as well as discomfort, not to mention confusion. Some of the sizing we saw in our research was completely baffling – one researcher was sold bras that ranged across seven sizes from a 34DD to a 40D.
It’s great to hear that industry is working together to get it right, so I’m keen to see whether this new association will create a better bra-buying experience. How does your bra-buying experience measure up with our research – time to get it off your chest here. [/bad bra puns]