The BRABAR Story From a Fit Expert: The Beginning

Five years ago in the summer of 2019, the physical location of BRABAR opened in Menlo Park Mall. At the time I worked at the store next to where BRABAR opened. I had known nothing about BRABAR, but what caught my eye was the giant mission statement on the front wall of the store. You couldn't miss it.

The mission statement that I read was:

"BRABAR was born of a desire to educate teenage girls about fit and the importance of wearing the right size bra because comfort is the foundation of confidence.

Every girl should know how to find her bra size. Women today do not know how to measure themselves. 8 of 10 need to wear a different size bra. Our EZ-Fit Method teaches young women to find the correct band measurement: essential to a proper fit.

We aim to help girls feel comfortable and confident in their skin while giving them the tools to be their best selves. We promote self-love and strive to cultivate strong, confident young women who recognize a simple, empowering truth: you are so much more than your body."

The powerful message of the mission of BRABAR was something that stuck with me. So when I wanted a change of pace in my life, I got myself a job as a Fit Consultant at BRABAR in October 2019.

Though I have worn bras since I was 12 years old, I had no idea how to find my own bra size. It was a mystery to me, so how in the world would I be able to help the young tweens and teens who came into the store? I was in for an eye-opening experience as I trained to become a Fit Expert under founder and owner Wendy Herman's guidance.

But let's start with my own perfect-fitting bra journey via working at BRABAR, and what I thought about bra sizes before working there.

As mentioned, I had been wearing bras since I was 12. I developed quicker than most girls my age, which was a horrifyingly embarrassing experience.

My mother is a very petite woman who could buy bras off the rack at any store, so when I, her oldest daughter, suddenly developed a much fuller bust, she didn't know what to do. There was no place like BRABAR when I was 12 back in 2002, so I had limited options for finding good, supportive, age-appropriate teen bras.

So we went to the only available place in the mall to find me something more suitable for my needs. My first experience in a bra store at the tender age of 12 was mortifying and horrible. My mother walked me in and sought assistance from the staff. The person in question was an older woman, probably around my mom's age, who looked at little middle-school me and said they had nothing for me. The staff member didn't even bother to measure me or offer any kind of service.

After that, I refused to step foot into a bra store, so I wore wireless bralettes with no support built in (so unlike the BRABAR brand) that were not what I needed to be comfortable in my own body. The bralette stretched out within a few weeks, I was always uncomfortable, my back always hurt, and I always felt like people were looking at me. Or rather my breasts. For seven years, I wasn't wearing the correct size or style of bra for me and my needs.

The experience stuck with me. No matter how much my mother tried, I wouldn't budge and go to another bra store. I wasn't going to be humiliated like that again.

It wasn't until I was nineteen years old that I finally stepped foot into another bra store, when I visited a great-aunt who insisted on taking me to her specialty bra store. I relented, and here was the first time I was fitted for a bra. I was told I was a 38G, a bra size my mother had never heard of in her life. This is important, remember this part. The woman who measured me was efficient and professional but explained nothing, so I had no idea how she came to that conclusion. I took her word for it.

I left with two expensive underwire bras (about $180 total, if you can believe it) that needed special care, hand wash, air dry, but they fit me well and I was more comfortable than I had been in a long time. However, I did notice one thing about the bras that I didn't like over time. The straps dug into my shoulders as I wore them. If I loosened the straps, they fell off my shoulders. And when the wires eventually broke, they poked me in the side, causing injury and irritation.

But I found a style of bra that worked the best, though it was not perfect, but better than anything I had worn in middle school and high school. So that was the style I bought for ten years.

Until BRABAR.

Now fast forward, and I'm in a new job doing something I had never done before, ready to learn about something I truly should have known since I hit puberty.

The memory of my first experience in a bra store at age 12 wasn't something I thought about much in my twenties, until I started working at BRABAR and trained to become a Fit Expert.

The experience we at BRABAR wanted to provide for the tweens, teens, and young adults who came in with their mothers, aunts, sisters, or on their own was a positive one. The most important thing was to leave them all with the knowledge and the tools to find their bra size and the bras that work for them and their needs.

And I knew that for these girls, walking into a bra store is one of the biggest and most pivotal moments of their lives. The majority of the tweens and teens I met felt the way I felt when my mother first brought me into a bra store years earlier: embarrassed, insecure, sometimes upset, conflicted, and wanting nothing more than to run away. Nothing is worse than being hyperaware of your own body during the most vulnerable part of your life.

I hadn't known it before, but my own difficult first experience laid the foundation for me to ensure that every girl who came through the doors of BRABAR had a great experience, leaving with knowledge and confidence. It was all about exceptional service and making our guests feel at ease.

After all, it's awkward to have a stranger measure your bra size, especially for a young girl in the most awkward stage of her life.

Within the first few months, I had to learn different tactics to make all the girls and women feel comfortable so that I could measure them. It helped that I had years of retail experience and knew how to read people's body language. Some girls needed time to look around and acclimate to even being there. Some wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible. Sometimes I measured the moms first, to show how simple it was, so the girls would feel comfortable too. If mom did it, they would too.

But the one thing I learned was that instead of just measuring people and handing them bras, you try to truly transform the experience by explaining how you got their size, and making recommendations based on their size and breast shape.

Now that we have the backstory of how I joined BRABAR, what was BRABAR all about?

The Origin Story of BRABAR

The origin story of BRABAR, as told to me by founder and owner Wendy Herman, began similarly to mine, with her own daughter and the struggle to find a bra for her. The founder's daughter had the opposite problem to me.

Where I was busty with a larger band size and struggled to find a bra that worked for me, her daughter was petite in the ribcage with a full bust. She was a 28DDD/F. Just as my mom had never heard of a G cup before, most people have never heard of a 28 band. The struggle was real, no matter what your bra size was.

How to Find Your Bra Size

What I learned at the start of becoming a Fit Expert was how to find your bra size. This was the key to performing my job duties. I needed to learn not just how to find it, but how to explain it, to demystify bra sizes for anyone willing to listen.

Finding your bra size is simply a matter of subtracting two measurements to get your cup size.

Your overbust measurement − your band size = your cup size

Your bra size is your band size and your cup, the number and the letter. One of the biggest misconceptions is that you shop by cup size alone, but you shouldn't, for one simple reason: everyone's cup size is different based on the difference between band and overbust measurements. The band size is the key to a good-fitting bra. Everything else is relative to it, so if the band size changes, so does the cup size.

The first step is to get your band size by measuring your ribcage, directly under the bust, parallel to the ground. Round to the nearest even number.

The second step is to get your overbust measurement by measuring the fullest part of your breasts, over the areola, tape parallel to the floor, rounded to the nearest whole number.

Once you have both, subtract the band size from the overbust measurement to get your cup size. Each inch of difference is one cup size:

• Less than 1 inch is an AA cup.
• 1 inch is an A cup.
• 2 inches is a B cup.
• 3 inches is a C cup.
• 4 inches is a D cup.
• 5 inches is a DD cup, or E cup, the same size under two different naming conventions.
• 6 inches is a DDD cup, or F cup, again the same size under two naming conventions.
• Beyond that, sizing continues to G, H, and further, following the same one-inch-per-letter pattern.

With your cup size in hand, you have your bra size: your band size and cup size together.

I first practiced measuring myself and discovered something very interesting. The place where I'd been buying bras for the last decade told me 38G, but I wasn't actually a 38G by this method. I was several letters higher.

Simply put, I had been wearing a UK-brand bra and hadn't known the difference between UK and US bra sizing conventions. UK sizing uses the same overbust-minus-band formula, but the resulting letters don't always match US labels one to one at the fuller end of the range.

Confusing, yes, I know. Cue my shock and surprise.

So this added another layer of confusion for people coming in, since brands may use different sizing conventions, especially ones from Europe and the UK.

But that wasn't the only wrinkle in learning about bra sizing. The plus-four method and the armpit method were alternate options, but neither provided the correct size. The plus-four method adds four inches to the band size. Other bra shops still use these methods, which confuses people when I tell them their actual size and they have a hard time believing it. Explaining exactly how you arrived at a size is key to good service.

Since cup size depends on the difference between band size and overbust measurement, changing the band size changes that difference, which changes the resulting cup size too.

If I had used the plus-four method on my actual band size, it would have inflated my band by four full inches, which would have made the band far too loose to actually support me. The armpit method means measuring your bust, then simply moving the tape up to the top of your breasts for your "band" measurement, which doesn't reflect where a band actually needs to sit at all.

BRABAR's core mission is to standardize how to measure your bra size to the overbust-minus-band formula: BRABAR's EZ-Fit Method. There's now a handy Bra Size Calculator you can use to measure yourself. Understanding why this is confusing for people, and explaining why BRABAR's method resolves that confusion, was key to helping people on their bra-buying journey.

Busting the Underwire Myth

The second part of my lesson was how to bust the underwire myth. The majority of people grew up wearing wire bras. I had worn wire bras for ten years myself. But here's the thing: you do not need wire to get good support, because the wire is not the support of the bra. The wire is the shape.

Explaining this is hard, because a common complaint about wireless bras is not liking a rounder, less separated silhouette. That's a completely fair preference! If you like the structured shape of a wire bra, there's nothing wrong with wearing one, but the wire doesn't support you the way most people think. There's a time and a place for a wire bra, and that's when you want a specific look.

The support actually comes from the band, not the straps or the wire. This is exactly why so many common complaints, straps digging into shoulders, bras not staying in place, upper back pain, all trace back to the same root cause. My own upper back hurt for years, even while wearing underwire.

Your band should support you from the bottom up. The bra should hug your ribcage snugly, like a hug. That's why band size is so crucial to your actual bra size.

You can check out other ways to know it's time for a new bra in BRABAR's signs of the wrong bra size guide.

Does Wireless Work for a Fuller Bust?

Now, the pushback against wireless comfort and support is usually about larger breasts not working in wireless bras. Wireless bras tend to be equated with a sports bra or a teen bralette in people's minds, and therefore assumed to offer no real support for a fuller bust. But that's not actually the case.

After I began working at BRABAR, I went on my own wireless bra journey. Since I fall outside BRABAR's labeled size range, I looked elsewhere and found suitable wireless options. I switched from wire to wireless because I finally understood my correct size and what I actually wanted in a bra. There's something out there for everyone.

Those with a fuller bust can absolutely wear a wireless bra, as long as that's the style they want. Most wireless bras have a more natural look. It's not a push-up underwire bra, after all. Wireless bras are about everyday comfort. There's a time and place for everything.

Do I Actually Wear BRABAR?

A question I often got from guests was whether I actually wear these bras myself. I'm busty, so it was a fair question. BRABAR's core range runs band sizes 28 to 38 and cup sizes AA to DDD/F, so my own size technically falls outside that range.

The short answer is yes, I do wear BRABAR bras.

BRABAR carries great styles: everyday bras, racerback bras, sports bras, cami bra tops, crop tops, lace bralettes, lace halters, backless halters, convertible bras, cotton bras, bras with adjustable straps, bras with removable pads, and more.

So the longer answer: yes, I wear BRABAR bras in the 36-38 size for my at-home wardrobe. My favorites are the Everyday Longline Cami Bra with the pads removed, the Soft Day Bra with Back Closure with no pads, and the Soft V Crop Bra. I wear these at home or even out on short errands. Though I'm technically outside the labeled cup range, the stretch of these bras without the pads is undeniable. Depending on the shape and weight of your breasts, they can work for more people than you'd think.

The follow-up question is whether I still wear underwire bras, since that's the traditional type. I don't anymore, not since starting at BRABAR. I found a wireless everyday bra that works for me, as well as a high-impact sports bra. This was part of my journey to realizing why the bras I'd worn for ten years weren't actually the perfect fit for me. I like no wire. I like being comfortable.

So now I have bras for home, bras for work, and bras for the gym, all of which work for me and my needs.

Everyone is different, of course. So you should do what makes you feel best.

BRABAR strives to standardize bra measuring to the overbust-minus-band formula. This method teaches girls and women alike to find the correct band measurement, essential to a proper fit.

Comfort is the foundation of confidence.

And from my own journey, from knowing nothing about bra sizing to where I am now, I can say for certain that this is true.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is BRABAR's EZ-Fit Method?

Subtract your band measurement (taken directly under the bust) from your overbust measurement (taken at the fullest part of the bust). The difference in inches gives your cup size, with no inches added at any step.

Why did a UK-sized bra not match US sizing?

UK sizing uses the same overbust-minus-band formula as the US, but the resulting cup letters don't always align one to one at the fuller end of the range, which can create real confusion when comparing sizes across brands.

Does support really come from the underwire?

No. Support comes primarily from the band. The underwire mainly affects shape and silhouette, not the actual support holding the bra in place.

Can a wireless bra support a fuller bust?

Yes. A correctly sized wireless bra, with a snug band doing the actual support work, can work well for a fuller bust, even though wireless styles are often assumed to be only for smaller busts.

Find your true size with BRABAR's Fit Guide and Bra Size Calculator.