My wife ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waxjism and I approach the bra spectrum from opposite ends and with opposite problems.
My problems are comparatively mild. I have a smaller than standard ribcage; I can wear 30(65)A or 28(60)B. In fact, I don't 'need' a bra for support at all... ( Read more... ) So because the sock yarn bralettes I was knitting came out so well (I've made three more since, so four definite successes), I think I may have solved this entire problem for good now, letting me throw out old microfiber ones and use the knitted ones for everyday and the underwire ones for rare special wardrobe requirements.
This success has understandably elated me and it caused my mind to return once more to my wife's problems, which were always about 100 times worse because her size is unusually large, around a 34(75)HH now. So that means the circumference of her ribcage is about four inches, or ten cm, greater than mine, but the circumference at the widest point of the cups is another 11 inches greater than that. (11 inches is the height of a Barbie doll. Not super relevant, it's just what I always think of when I read '11 inches'. More germanely, the height of a sheet of A4 paper.)
Anyway, it's obvious that her problem has always been worse than mine. This cup size is larger than most places carry by default, and the band size is smaller than most large-cup manufacterers make with that large a cup. ( Read more... )
She also hasn't ever found a sports bra that fits. This isn't that important because she doesn't do any real sports, or any exercise for the sake of exercise; but there are still lots of activities that would be more comfortable with one (moving furniture! construction! gardening! running up and down the stairs!) if she could get one that would be more comfortable than either (a) nothing or (b) an underwired bra, and she never has. Large cup-size sports bras are... vanishingly rare. Many of them still have underwires, which are pretty much inherently uncomfortable but possibly less uncomfortable than the alternative of the breasts squashing into each other and escaping the garment from both the top and the bottom. I read a bunch of reviews and blog posts on the subject a few years ago and tried to order some of the well-reviewed ones for her to try out, but it was failure on all counts again.
It just makes me so mad. I just can't believe that in the whole history of human garment-making in every culture nobody has invented a way of restraining large breasts that would at least be more comfortable for her when lounging around the house! The closest she's come is wearing a Japanese yukata (light cotton summer kimono), which can be folded and tied so that the cotton goes under and over them and separates them from each other; but the support is minimal there and it has to be tied with a sash... and you can't really shrink the yukata down to an undergarment. You can make a sort of jacket-like pyjama top I guess. The support of a corset or set of stays is supposed to be good, but that wouldn't be comfortable for carrying furniture or gardening. Maybe a linen chemise/smock with a custom-fitted, stretched woven gown or bodice such as could be found in parts of Europe more or less between the 13th-15th centuries before the introduction of leather and straw/boned stays? But aside from the fact that they're difficult to make and the whole custom fitting part is inaccessible to nearly everybody, I can't see modern women gardening or whatever in clothing they had to be laced into. What about the style of dress in ancient Greece and Rome? I think I've read, somewhere, hints that there were methods of binding a chiton up with cords in a pattern crossed around the torso that might have managed to be reasonably functional support...
It probably doesn't help that I'm, like, not an engineer or a seamstress. But again, I can't help thinking it shouldn't have to be an invention because women have been around, having large breasts, for, you know, possibly millions of years?
waxjism and I approach the bra spectrum from opposite ends and with opposite problems.My problems are comparatively mild. I have a smaller than standard ribcage; I can wear 30(65)A or 28(60)B. In fact, I don't 'need' a bra for support at all... ( Read more... ) So because the sock yarn bralettes I was knitting came out so well (I've made three more since, so four definite successes), I think I may have solved this entire problem for good now, letting me throw out old microfiber ones and use the knitted ones for everyday and the underwire ones for rare special wardrobe requirements.
This success has understandably elated me and it caused my mind to return once more to my wife's problems, which were always about 100 times worse because her size is unusually large, around a 34(75)HH now. So that means the circumference of her ribcage is about four inches, or ten cm, greater than mine, but the circumference at the widest point of the cups is another 11 inches greater than that. (11 inches is the height of a Barbie doll. Not super relevant, it's just what I always think of when I read '11 inches'. More germanely, the height of a sheet of A4 paper.)
Anyway, it's obvious that her problem has always been worse than mine. This cup size is larger than most places carry by default, and the band size is smaller than most large-cup manufacterers make with that large a cup. ( Read more... )
She also hasn't ever found a sports bra that fits. This isn't that important because she doesn't do any real sports, or any exercise for the sake of exercise; but there are still lots of activities that would be more comfortable with one (moving furniture! construction! gardening! running up and down the stairs!) if she could get one that would be more comfortable than either (a) nothing or (b) an underwired bra, and she never has. Large cup-size sports bras are... vanishingly rare. Many of them still have underwires, which are pretty much inherently uncomfortable but possibly less uncomfortable than the alternative of the breasts squashing into each other and escaping the garment from both the top and the bottom. I read a bunch of reviews and blog posts on the subject a few years ago and tried to order some of the well-reviewed ones for her to try out, but it was failure on all counts again.
It just makes me so mad. I just can't believe that in the whole history of human garment-making in every culture nobody has invented a way of restraining large breasts that would at least be more comfortable for her when lounging around the house! The closest she's come is wearing a Japanese yukata (light cotton summer kimono), which can be folded and tied so that the cotton goes under and over them and separates them from each other; but the support is minimal there and it has to be tied with a sash... and you can't really shrink the yukata down to an undergarment. You can make a sort of jacket-like pyjama top I guess. The support of a corset or set of stays is supposed to be good, but that wouldn't be comfortable for carrying furniture or gardening. Maybe a linen chemise/smock with a custom-fitted, stretched woven gown or bodice such as could be found in parts of Europe more or less between the 13th-15th centuries before the introduction of leather and straw/boned stays? But aside from the fact that they're difficult to make and the whole custom fitting part is inaccessible to nearly everybody, I can't see modern women gardening or whatever in clothing they had to be laced into. What about the style of dress in ancient Greece and Rome? I think I've read, somewhere, hints that there were methods of binding a chiton up with cords in a pattern crossed around the torso that might have managed to be reasonably functional support...
It probably doesn't help that I'm, like, not an engineer or a seamstress. But again, I can't help thinking it shouldn't have to be an invention because women have been around, having large breasts, for, you know, possibly millions of years?
