3 ms·

My girlfriend and her sister started a bra and underwear company together: https://tizzandtonic.com/ https://tizzandtonic.com/ They have found the bra part of

My girlfriend and her sister started a bra and underwear company together: https://tizzandtonic.com/ https://tizzandtonic.com/ They have found the bra part of it to be especially difficult because of how hard the sizing is. There are bust and band measurements as used in these sorts of calculators, but at the end of the day the breasts themselves just have different shapes. I'm surprised that these sorts of calculators don't take that into account by having the user first pick their specific "archetype", e.g. from a set of images. I wonder if that's what abrathatfits.org is doing by getting measurements in different positions to better capture the shape. Still, I wonder if this could be accomplished more simply. Anyways this can be tough for a startup given the higher return rates and more hesitation when buying bras. They've found success in offering flexibly fitting bralettes made of stretchy materials (e.g. micromodal). This sort of sidesteps the fitting issue because the fit doesn't need to be as exact. The downside is that for some women a bralette doesn't provide enough support (no wire, no padding).

Mezzie 4y ago
> I'm surprised that these sorts of calculators don't take that into account by having the user first pick their specific "archetype", e.g. from a set of images. They can't. Unfortunately, until a woman is in a properly sized bra, it's pretty much impossible to actually have the information needed to determine said archetype. It's REALLY hard to visually eye breast roots, especially on larger women, and in addition a lot of the archetypes are relative (for example, knowing if you have short roots means you have to know what a 'average height' or 'tall' root would look like). You also can only tell your archetype while wearing a bra because supported breasts behave differently than breasts au natural. As an example, I have very, very close-set breasts - I need low gores because when I'm in a bra, there's literally no separation between tissue. However, braless you can't tell this at all - it's an interaction between the wire, fabric tension, and my body. Which is why you need a properly fitting bra to tell: Otherwise the wire isn't sitting in the right place and won't be interacting with the tissue in the same way. And close-set versus wide-set is one of the easier things for a woman to determine on her own.
- psychicsmajor 4y ago
  What about a physics simulation to back into those parameters? Given a front and side image without wearing a bra are there really so many different archetypes that can produce the resulting shape?
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    So off the top of my (not entirely sober) head at the moment: - Tall vs. short vs. average height breast root - Wide vs. narrow vs. average width breast root - Breast root separation (also wide, narrow, average) - Tissue density and malleability (some women have tissue that can work with a variety of bras whereas some [like me] have tissue that is pretty dense and will resist any shaping efforts by the bra) - Tissue distribution/Tissue fullness (upper fullness vs. lower fullness for a total of four quadrants): Full upper and shallow bottom [very rare outside of situations like lumpectomies], shallow upper and shallow bottom, shallow upper and fuller bottom, full upper and full bottom. - Ribcage shape (some women have barrel shaped ribcages or pectus excavatum plus those who have less padding/are on the smaller band size range and therefore no/less fat to smooth out the bumps can have this cause fit issues) The primary difficulties are the UX/end user complexity problem AND the fact that those different archetypes can produce the same visual or physical results. For instance, being able to tell if a cup is too big or too tall or whether a cup is too closed on top or too small can be really difficult even for humans. Does the gore not tack because the breasts are too close-set or because the cup is too small? Etc. And yeah, images not in a bra would be useless because there are literally physics forces acting on the tissue when it's in a bra versus not that change things. For example, pendulous breasts would not scan as having any upper fullness at all, but when the root is supported, upper fullness is possible and therefore needs to be considered in fit. There's information that's necessary to a proper fit which literally cannot be gathered from a nude look/scan. From a UX/customer service perspective, most women don't understand the sizing chart. Adding extra variables isn't going to work well, especially without hard and fast rules to follow. Even asking women to wear a well fitting bra at home won't solve basic user error problems such as women forgetting to scoop and swoop all their tissue in.
    - 4y ago

Mezzie 4y ago

> I'm surprised that these sorts of calculators don't take that into account by having the user first pick their specific "archetype", e.g. from a set of images. They can't. Unfortunately, until a woman is in a properly sized bra, it's pretty much impossible to actually have the information needed to determine said archetype. It's REALLY hard to visually eye breast roots, especially on larger women, and in addition a lot of the archetypes are relative (for example, knowing if you have short roots means you have to know what a 'average height' or 'tall' root would look like). You also can only tell your archetype while wearing a bra because supported breasts behave differently than breasts au natural. As an example, I have very, very close-set breasts - I need low gores because when I'm in a bra, there's literally no separation between tissue. However, braless you can't tell this at all - it's an interaction between the wire, fabric tension, and my body. Which is why you need a properly fitting bra to tell: Otherwise the wire isn't sitting in the right place and won't be interacting with the tissue in the same way. And close-set versus wide-set is one of the easier things for a woman to determine on her own.

psychicsmajor 4y ago
What about a physics simulation to back into those parameters? Given a front and side image without wearing a bra are there really so many different archetypes that can produce the resulting shape?
- Mezzie 4y ago
  So off the top of my (not entirely sober) head at the moment: - Tall vs. short vs. average height breast root - Wide vs. narrow vs. average width breast root - Breast root separation (also wide, narrow, average) - Tissue density and malleability (some women have tissue that can work with a variety of bras whereas some [like me] have tissue that is pretty dense and will resist any shaping efforts by the bra) - Tissue distribution/Tissue fullness (upper fullness vs. lower fullness for a total of four quadrants): Full upper and shallow bottom [very rare outside of situations like lumpectomies], shallow upper and shallow bottom, shallow upper and fuller bottom, full upper and full bottom. - Ribcage shape (some women have barrel shaped ribcages or pectus excavatum plus those who have less padding/are on the smaller band size range and therefore no/less fat to smooth out the bumps can have this cause fit issues) The primary difficulties are the UX/end user complexity problem AND the fact that those different archetypes can produce the same visual or physical results. For instance, being able to tell if a cup is too big or too tall or whether a cup is too closed on top or too small can be really difficult even for humans. Does the gore not tack because the breasts are too close-set or because the cup is too small? Etc. And yeah, images not in a bra would be useless because there are literally physics forces acting on the tissue when it's in a bra versus not that change things. For example, pendulous breasts would not scan as having any upper fullness at all, but when the root is supported, upper fullness is possible and therefore needs to be considered in fit. There's information that's necessary to a proper fit which literally cannot be gathered from a nude look/scan. From a UX/customer service perspective, most women don't understand the sizing chart. Adding extra variables isn't going to work well, especially without hard and fast rules to follow. Even asking women to wear a well fitting bra at home won't solve basic user error problems such as women forgetting to scoop and swoop all their tissue in.
  - 4y ago