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matt-snider | 3 years ago
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|3 years ago
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|3 years ago