Ok, so what is wrong with shop bought bras, and why should you have a go at making your own bras? As a Freelance Intimate Apparel Designer, I will confirm the secret that I think you already know... the bra industry has got it wrong! If the bras they make fit a reasonable proportion of the population and the industry makes a profit, why change the ways in which it sizes bras? Yes - it’s about money and the “bell curve”.

 

For all of you who were lost in the maths class when the subject of averages was being taught, a bell curve is a graph (picture representation) of how popular things are:

So if the average bra size in Briton is now supposed to be 36C, then the size 36C would be at the top of the bell shape on the graph and the less demanded sizes - your 28EE or 38J - would be at the edges of the bell shape. BUT, here is the thing! Your 28EE or 38J sizes are now in more and more demand, and the industry just has not come up with the right answers.

The two main problems in the industry are the way bra cups and their underwires are drafted or graded for different sizes. Yes, the poor dears try asymmetric grading of the cups for large sizes but those underwires keep on getting bigger. Wire in the armpit, anyone?

The fact is, it would cost money for companies to conduct an up-to-date size survey of the market and then redraft their master blocks to correctly fit the modern, large-breasted woman. It is not the fault of you good ladies. Particularly in Briton, breast sizes and volumes have increased, but chest wall and back sizes have remained the same. Some of you corset makers may have come across this when a client who needs a made-to-measure corset says that they are “bigger up top than the bottom”, meaning that they are big breasted in proportion to their hips and “stock sized” corsets do not fit right.

“If it looks right it must be right.” Over the years I have come to trust this statement when applied to a design. One of the designs I always refer to when talking about good design is from a famous aircraft designer from my hometown of Stoke-on-Trent,

R.J. Michell who designed the WW2 Spitfire aircraft, a perfect design that looks so right with it’s beautiful elliptical wings that flow into the fuselage - see below:

"But what’s that got to do with good bra design?" I hear you say. When I was at university my class were shown some “plus-size” bras from a company who were supposed to specialised in plus-sized bras - but when I looked at the bras they just did not look "right”, with their very large cups plus underwires and their tiny wings.

Yes, the large cups would contain the breast volume and the distance from the end of one wing along the bra to the end of the other wing would fit around the chest... BUT the proportions of the wings to the cups DID NOT LOOK RIGHT!

I know I should have spoken up at the time but this was a company who were making money, I was a student and the ladies in my class did not speak up either. As I’ve said before, anyone above a cup size D is considered “plus-size” by the industry. Research indicates that over 50% of UK women are now a D cup size or larger, so "plus-size" is average size! I could see the main problems plus size ladies and their bras have...

The chest wall is not the Great Wall of China. The main “fit” requirement of an underwire in a bra is that the underwire fits along the breast root from centre front, under the breast and up the side. For those who have forgotten what the breast root is; it’s the edge of the breast tissue were it contacts the chest wall. So the cup fabric of the bra supports the breast, so it doesn't rest on the chest wall or rib cage at any point, and the underwire must sit up against the breast root, rather than have part of the underwire in your armpit!

It’s that time of the week again for “Grey’s Anatomy for the fashion conscious” (whoopee!). Now don’t go falling asleep like you may have done in maths or science lessons at school, this is important anatomy stuff...

Let’s imagine that the following diagram’s where made from pictures using a hospital MRI scanner:

The first pic is a MRI slice through the body at bust height and shows the shape of the breasts of what was your UK average core size UK 34B bust. Yea! 50 years ago maybe...

The next is the shape of the breasts of a UK 30J bust:

The breast tissue, as well as projecting out from the chest wall, projects sideways; overhanging the breast root perimeter. In at least one book that I know of, this shape is referred to as an "Omega" breast shape. It’s a very good description as the breast shape MRI profile has the appearance of the Greek letter Omega. So I will stick with this name.

Here lies the problem fitting a bra cup to the Omega breast shape, the cup must hold the volume of the breast tissues but the underwire must sit against the breast root which is overhung by the breast tissue at the sides as well as underneath.

If we take a “core size” UK 34B wire, and then use the traditional grading rules to increase the size up to the cup size that is supposed to hold the omega breast size, we find that the cup has the correct volume for the breast, but the perimeter of the cup and the underwire that goes with it tend to extend beyond the breast root and into your armpit; “the ouch zone”!

So how do we go about drafting an underwired cup for the Omega breast? We could start by drafting a new single darted cup master block that makes a cup “cone” with more projection and volume, and a smaller base.

This would give us a cup with the required holding volume for the breast and a small base circumference to fit to the breast root and underwire, BUT you can see the cups of the bra would not have what you would call a fashionable shape. More like two ICBM’s; Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles!!! Or Inter-Continental Ballistic Mammaries (sorry, I just had to! Be careful missus, you’ll take someone’s eye out with them!).

We could try approaching the draft from a different starting point. As you should already be doing when pattern drafting, I need you to think in three dimensions. It’s at the heart of garment pattern drafting; the ability to mentally visualise how a flat 2D paper pattern forms up into a 3D object that fits the human body.

Let us simplify the UK 34B bra cup shape to half a sphere or “dome”. The dome is derived from a sphere cut in half (as in maths - break a big problem down and simplify).

(By the way; a UK 34B breast is supposed to have a volume of 368.5 cubic centimetres - but I have never checked this.)

 

And the pattern for this dome bra cup would be:

But for the Omega breast, the simplified dome (half a sphere) would not work. We need to cut the starting sphere in a different plane (flat surface) to obtain the necessary “undercut”. This means the “Omega dome” has the right volume but a small perimeter to the opening, to match the underwire size that fits the breast root.

And the pattern for this omega dome bra cup would be:

Notice how the “seam lines” of the Omega dome cup panels curve back in, so if you continue the seam curves you would end up with panels that would make a complete sphere.

Now, START TO THINK IN 3D. In the other bra articles, I have said that overbust and underbust cup panel seams are really darts that are derived from the single dart of the single darted master cup block, and what you have with the Omega dome cup panels seams are just curved darts!

Has the penny dropped yet? Has the light bulb come on above your head? (It still hasn’t in the industry) How about transferring the curvature of the Omega dome cup panels seam lines to our darted cup master block? But we could in a particular way so we end up with fashionable shaping to the cup that I sometimes mention (or bang on about?).

Remember, for a fashionable shape: “the golden triangle” and no “east-westing”. If we were to use the Omega dome cup panels “as is” then the east-westing would be terrible and the golden triangle is out the window! So we need a cup draft that pushes the breasts in and up, but still keeps the small wire and large volume for the Omega shape. Again, as I have said in the past when pattern drafting, do not waste expensive fabric but make paper or sticky tape mock-ups of the cups. Then look at them from every angle to see if they give a pleasing shape and that they will follow the curve of the chest wall and breast root. “If it looks right then it must be right.”

So, try this for size. Take a breast root trace and select an underwire that fits it. Remember to spring the wire open by 1.5cm when trying up against the trace / yourself / client.

 

Now measure the length of the underwire and remember to add on to the length of the wire, plus 5mm at each end for “wire play” and 3mm at each end for “bar tack sinkage”. That’s 16mm to add to the length of your wire.

By the way, 5mm wire play allows the wire to move slightly within the casing to allow for left / right chest wall differences. The 3mm bar tack sinkage is the amount of wire case and fabric that is compressed when stitching across the casing to seal in the underwire at each end of the casing.

Draft a master darted cup block that matches your overbust measurement or you may like to go one size bigger as we will be removing some of the cup volume. You could enlarge your already drafted master cup by “shift grading” (see the bra drafting / making article). Now divide the cup into three panels, and remember we are partly closing-up the single underbust dart to create two new darts along lines 6 and 3 that become the overbust seam (shifting some of the dart control or “Divide and Conquer”). Then we round off the point of bust.

 

This will give us the usual half sphere dome cup made from three panels, but we need to curve in the ends of the darts to give us the omega dome. But by how much? The answer again: “Divide and Conquer”.

These measurements are an example only. For example: a client measures 23cm over each breast indicating a size 6 cup fitting but her breast root trace calls for a underwire equivalent to a UK34B which is about a cup size 4 wire, MS20 style and 19.75cm in length.

 

Measure the perimeter of the cup and subtract the underwire length from this measurement. Remember to add the 1.6cm to the wire length.

We now know how much to take away and curve in on the dart ends, but we will not share out the difference equally between the three darts. We are after some fashion shaping. So, the smallest amount is removed from the centre front end of overbust dart seam, the next largest amount is removed from the underbust seam / dart and the greatest amount comes out of the arm side of the overbust dart seam.

In my example, which is based on a size 6 cup, I will remove: 1.25cm from the centre front, 2.5cm from the underbust and 3.0cm from the arm side. Yes, the measurements seem small in my example, but for plus size cups the measurements of the “cup-to-wire ratio” may be much larger and the “curving-in” effect more pronounced.

Here are the amounts spilt between the seam lines:

This has the effect of reducing the amount of volume in the arm side of the cup to push the breast into the greater space in the centre front part of the cup i.e. to help reduce 'east-westing'. This is same idea behind asymmetric cup grading.

I will not give absolute measurements for every cup size / wire length, as I would like you to experiment with paper mock-ups and to think in three dimensions; “...if I take a bit out here or put some more in there, what would the new shape look like?” Try to think and visualise 3D in your head, and then try with paper.

One thing that may happen to the draft and paper mock-up of the cup, is that you get an “indent” in the curvature of the cup perimeter at a dart end. We must fill in these indents to return to a smooth curving edge on the cup.

So go back to the draft and add extra to the ends of the dart / seam lines, then re-curve the cup panel edges. To get the right amount and angles of the lines, hold a small square of paper up against the mock-up cup seam end on the inside of the cup and use a pencil or felt tipped pen to draw the correction. Then transfer this to the cup draft - cut and stick, if need be.

Although the cup now has the requirements of small underwire / large cup volume, we may still have a bit of pointy ICBM going on. If we view the cup from above - as if you were wearing the cup - you can see this:

So think about and visualise re-curving the overbust seam lines to round off and move the fullness of the cup to more centre front.
Try this and experiment:

To complete the bra draft, start as usual with the underwire to draft the cradle and wing.

You should now have a bra for the small-backed, large-busted UK modern woman that looks in proportion. There should be no over big cups with small wings and no underwires in the armpits - although the cups will be big enough to contain the breasts.

This idea will also work for the Full framed cup soft bra, so experiment. If it looks right then it must be right!

Talking about shifting fullness and moving darts around their origin; if you are small- to medium-busted then have a 3D think about this cup cut. Start with your single dart master cup and “swing” the dart, curved lines 4 / 5, around the Point of Bust origin to the line 3 position.

The rounded fullness is moved from underbust to centre front, pushing the breast up into the new fullness area.

Yes, it still needs some more “rounding”, but have a 3D think about it and experiment.

Lastly, another thing wrong with the industry; there is no such thing as a trained bra and corsetry fitter, as there is no national or internationally recognised and standardised qualification in bra fitting. De Montfort University and London College of Fashion take note; this could be a chance to make some money running a national / international bra-fitting course for sales assistants, so every one sings from the same hymn sheet and sizing chart. (Unless some shops still what to carry on with “Vanity Sizing” or “We can’t be bothered to fit you so go into the changing room and just try on some bras”...)

 

 

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