Bra-blem (noun) : 1. when your straps slip off your shoulders 2. when your too-tight band rides up 3. when your straps dig into your shoulders 4. when the cups don’t fit quite right; see also: ThirdLove
Isn’t it fun to be a woman? We kicked corsets to the curb, but bras are here to stay and so we might as well make the most of it. To me that means finding underpinnings that both look beautiful and fit perfectly. And while I have managed to stock my lingerie drawer with a bunch of pretty little underthings, I’ve recently realized that many of the bras in my regular rotation don’t actually fit me all that well. Let me tell you a little story:
Once upon a time in high school, I took a trip to my local Victoria’s Secret. Seduced by the neon-hued lace and the overflowing buy-one-get-one-free bins, I gathered an armful of bras and tried them all on until I found a style that was both comfortable and cute. Fast forward ten years, and I’m simply wearing a newer iteration of that same style in the same size. Why fix it if it ain’t broke, right?
Sure, my straps were always slipping off my shoulders as I was power walking (read: rushing) to work in the morning, but I never had to spend time agonizing over what to buy when I needed to add a few new bras to my arsenal. I just waltzed over to the style and size I’d always worn, picked out one or two new colors and was out the door within 10 minutes. This sense of convenience prevented me from ever reevaluating my size.
Which brings us to ThirdLove. It turns out that the fine folks at this online lingerie shop know a thing or two about fit. And it also turns out (as you may have guessed by now) that I’ve been wearing the wrong-size bra for my whole adult life. Those slipping straps? They were less a product of wear and tear—which is what I had always assumed—and more a product of a too-loose band. See, I never wanted to tighten the straps properly, because then the back of my bra would ride up…which only happened because the band wasn’t ever tight enough around my ribs. It was a revelation.
Armed with this new knowledge, I decided to order myself the 24/7 Classic T-Shirt Bra in one band size down and one cup size up from what I had always worn (you should always go up a cup size when you go down a band size because the cups are proportional to the band, so a 38B and a 34C will have just about the same cup size). Normally, I would never order a brand new bra size online without having tried it on first, but ThirdLove offers a free 30-day trial so you can test out your new bra—you can even cut off the tags—before deciding if you want to keep it. Truly low stakes!
If you’re looking to do some spring cleaning in your lingerie drawer, or you suspect that you’ve been wearing the wrong size all along, pop on over to ThirdLove and try out the 24/7 bra. If you’re like me, after one day of wearing that bad boy you’ll have your eye on the pretty lace version next. Homemade Banana readers can use code BRABLEMSJAN15 to recieve 15% off orders through February 15.
