Tag Archives: how to find your bra size

Bra Sizes: Cup & Band Together

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Hello Ladies,

In the first installment of this series, I discussed the demographics both of my store as well as of the area, and in the second, I focused on the best-selling cup and band sizes.  Today, I want to combine the data on band and cup sizes to examine what bra sizes we have seen over the last year.  For simplicity, I’ve created a series of bar charts for each band size that presents a detailed breakdown of the sales in each cup size:

Top 5 Best-Selling UK Bra Sizes:

  1. 32DDD/E
  2. 34G
  3. 32FF
  4. 34F
  5. 36G

Observations:

  • Given that E-G cup sizes account for 70% of our sales, it is not unexpected that they would make a strong showing in nearly every band size.  However, the 44 band size has the best distribution for GG+ cup sizes.
  • In multiple band sizes, it seems like the two best-selling cup sizes often “skip” a middle size, e.g., in 32 bands, E and FF cups dominate instead of E and F.

Larger Cups and Smaller Bands

As a large cup/small band woman, I’ve mentioned before that I find the lack of options frustrating, and yet, my own sales data seems to indicate why.  For the 8% of our customers wearing a 28 or 30 band, next to none are above a G cup.  Even women in the 32 band are overwhelmingly likely to be a G Cup and under (with the 32DDD being our best-selling size for the entire store).  It’s not until we start venturing into 38+ bands that we begin to see more sales in the GG-K cup range.  Data like this emphasizes the importance of and strengthens my commitment to our special order policy.  Given our sales records, it does not behoove us to invest in inventory that won’t sell (or will only do so infrequently), which is not to imply we won’t carry small band/large cup sizes only to mention that we won’t have as diverse an assortment as we do for our best-selling sizes.

A Small Bands Addendum

Going one step further than merely addressing the dearth of smaller bands/larger cups, I want to offer a tentative explanation as to why we don’t see many small bands in general.  With all of our 28 band size customers wearing between a DD and G cup, we’re looking at women who may not even realize how large their cup size really is.  According to the often used albeit woefully inaccurate +4 method, women in this band size could be wearing anything from 32A-DD.  In fact, most of the women who leave the store with a 28 or 30 band often came in wearing a 32D, 34C, or 36B.  Because their breast tissue isn’t as heavy as someone who wears a 32J, for example, they may never find the need to educate themselves about their correct bra size.  Couple that with our early reputation for being a store for plus-size women or women with big boobs, and the potential for many of our 28 and 30 band customers to write us off as “not for them” increases.

Bigger Cups for 40+ Bands

The blogosphere offers a plethora of fabulous, curvy women, but the majority wear under a 36 band and are at least an F cup.  However, there’s another large cup market that is severely under-represented:  Women who wear 40+ bands and G+ cups.  Many of our customers fall into this category, and in some cases, we’ve had to marry the work of an adept seamstress with what manufacturers produce simply because the cup sizes aren’t big enough.  In fairness, I have seen more women wearing H-J cup bras in these band sizes than in the smaller ones, and the options are even scarcer.  I have high hopes that Panache’s Sculptress line will bridge the gap and give these women new options.

 The Skip Phenomenon

As I mentioned in the observations, I was intrigued by how the two most popular cup sizes for a given band always seemed to skip size.  I don’t really have an explanation for this, but I found it fascinating nonetheless that there really wasn’t a set pattern for each cup size.  In some cases, there was a build-up to the best-selling sizes, but in others there seemed to be two dominating sizes with little sales in-between.  As we’re open longer and have more data to pull from, I’ll be interested to see if these sales start to normalize.

Now, that you’ve seen all of the statistics, what are you thoughts?  Are there any other store owners out there willing to present an alternative view?  Professional fitters feel free to offer a view as well!

Erica

“I’m a WHAT?!”

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Hello Ladies,

Often times during a fitting, I hear women exclaim “I’m a what?!” when I tell them the cup size portion of their measurement. “No, I can’t possibly be a (fill in the blank) cup!” Sound familiar? Part of this confusion arises from a long-standing misconception (propagated in part by the media) about how cup sizes relate to a woman’s boobs. The lovely and funny Sofia Vergara, for example, claims to wear a 34DD bra:

So, women (and men) associate a DD cup with Sofia’s ample chest or Salma Hayek’s or Jessica Simpson’s or . . . and the list continues.  One perusal of websites claiming to know “celebrity bra sizes” reveals similar seemingly large cup sizes for celebrities with bigger-than-average chests (Christina Hendricks is a 38DDD?  Are you being serious?).  For what seems like forever, cup sizes have been regarded in this way:

A’s are flat, B’s are small, C’s are average, D’s are big, DD’s are huge, and DDD’s are ridiculous.

The truth is, however, that cup sizes mean absolutely nothing on their own.  But, why?  Cup sizes are only one half an old married couple, and it is their long-suffering partner, the band size, that gives the cup size any kind of significance.  The little known fact to finding the right size bra is that cup sizes vary widely from one band size to another, i.e., a D is not a D is not a D.

Bras, like other fashion items, are built on the idea of scaling proportion, but the scale does not center on the cup—it’s the band that’s the star here.  The band of the bra is designed to represent your torso girth with everything from the width of the cups to the placement of the straps to the length of the wings shifting with each size so that every woman will get a customized fit.  As you step up in band size, the entire bra scales upward because the designer recognizes that the woman wearing this band is proportionally bigger than the woman who wears a smaller size.  This means that if a woman wears a band size too big for her, she will suffer from the underwire extending too far on her sides, a band that does not snugly support her breasts, straps that are too wide set, and proportionally bigger cups that require her to size down.

So, how do cup sizes factor in?  Simply put, they follow a pretty straightforward formula:

A = Band Size + 1, B = Band Size + 2, C = Band Size + 3, etc.

Nevertheless, because there is often a limited selection of sizes available, women will usually buy “cup size equivalent” bras—or bras whose sizes are vastly different but whose cups require the same amount of breast tissue.  For example, all of these sizes are cup-size equivalents:

28G = 30FF = 32F = 34DDD = 36DD = 38D = 40C

And here is the heart of why cup sizes mean absolutely nothing without a band size to define them.  The woman who wears a 28DD, for example, has less breast tissue than the woman who wears the 34DD.  In fact, a 34DD is cup size equivalent to 28FF!

To demonstrate how the band and cup size work together, let’s examine the DD cup:

28DD = 28″ ribcage, 33″ chest
30DD = 30″ ribcage, 35″ chest
32DD = 32″ ribcage, 37″ chest
34DD = 34″ ribcage, 39″ chest, etc.

Now, does Sofia Vergara really look like she has a 34″ ribcage and 39″ chest (roughly equivalent to a US size 12)?  I doubt it, and if I had to guess, I would say Sofia is probably closer to a 30HH in the above picture.

In closing, your band size is the most important aspect of your bra to fit perfectly because it provides over 80% of the support for your breasts and is the basis for the entire proportion of the bra.  All the cup size tells you is how deep a cup you need!

For more information on how band and cup sizing works, please check out our video blog on the subject!

Erica