It's the second installment of our Bosom Week series and today we're discussing the ins and outs (or maybe better put, the ups and downs!) of bra fit.

Lift  and love, ladies.  Don't shift and shove.
Sculpt and tease.  Don't heave and squeeze.

If there's one thing I've learned so far on this quest it's that the size on the tag doesn't matter.  Fit is everything.

Here are the 2 key points to remember:

1. The band should be SNUG.
2. The cups should HUG.
   

Let's expand on Point 1, because this one is the most crucial, and according to a zillion sources, the one where we women are making the biggest mistakes.

Snug means the band should run horizontally from the bottom of the cup to the back clasp.  And when it's new, it should do this on the loosest hooks so that you can maintain the fit as the bra ages by tightening the hooks. If your band is too big it will ride up in the back.  As soon as that happens, the support is lost and the bra is a failure.
If you've been wearing loose bras for a long time that snug fit that's correct might feel weird or uncomfortable.  Give it a week!  You'll quickly find that having properly supported breasts with nice shape is much more comfortable than sagging free.

When I started trying on my existing bras, I was shocked to find that even on the tightest hooks, most of them rode up in back.  I'd put them on, turn to the side, and whoops! - a nice diagonal line from the bottom of the cup up to the hooks. And it wasn't because I had the straps cinched too tight.

Hook your thumb under the clasp of your bra and pull it away from your back.  You should not be able to pull the back of the bra more than an two or so inches away from your body.  If you can't pull it at all, it's too small. Snug doesn't mean tight. You should be able to slide a finger or two under the band all along the sides and back.

Almost all the support should come from the band and cups, NOT from the straps.  Many women keep tightening their straps to lift their breasts when in reality, the band and cups should be handling that job.  According to Intimacy (the miracle-working bra specialists frequently showcased on What Not To Wear) 90% of the support should come from the band, and only 10% from the straps. But it's hard to gauge whether your band is doing 90% of the work.  We might think it's doing 90% when in reality it's more of a 60/40 split, or worse. 

A good hug goes all the way around.  Applying that concept to the underwire of the cup means it should "smile" all the way around the bottom of your breast.  One end should sit under your arm, slightly behind the breast so that it doesn't dig into the breast.  The other end should stop between both breasts.  And it should lay flat against your ribcage, not flat against the bottom of your boob.  At no point should it gap away from your ribcage or sternum.  If it does, it's too small.

That was another mistake I was making.  The cups were too small on many of my bras, with the underwires tilting away and starting somewhere in the side of my breasts, instead of flat under my arm.

The cups should not gap, pucker, pull, or create quadra-boobs.  You shouldn't swim in them nor bulge out of them.  The style of the bra will have much to do with this (which we'll discuss in the next post).  If the band and underwire fit you well, but the cups don't, try a different style of cup; full coverage, balconet, demi, angled, etc.   Here's a nice little video covering the finer points of good bra fit.

Fact: Most women are wearing band sizes too large and cup sizes too small. 

Join me for the next post in the series when we'll talk about color, calculators, and reconciling style vs size!

Here are today's links:
1. The Top 10 Bra Mistakes at Intimacy.
2. A nice Full Experience bra fit video from Bravissimo in England.

*Eternal Voyager, whose Bra Matrix I linked yesterday, let me know she would be happy to answer any questions about bras, fitting and breasts through her blog.  She's done a lot of research on the Bra Matrix and I've learned a lot from her.