Fascinating

Hi Jelena,
The subject of ready-to-wear bra sizing and taking measurements of a woman so that a reasonable fitting bra can be selected has always been very hit and miss affair.
The main problem has always been supporting the breasts in a position were measurements can be taken. Yes it’s the old “chicken and egg” situation, to be measured for a bra you first have to be wearing a good fitting bra!
There have been many attempts at making and using mechanical devises to take measurements, just have a search through the US patents for such instruments of torture.
In some of my articles on bra pattern drafting and making I sometimes refer to the volume of the breasts, can the designed bra cup hold the breast tissue volume in the required fashionable shape and this is the key to ready-to-wear sizing. Forget linear measurements and think about designing a bra cup to hold the volume of breast tissue for a particular label size. But how to go about it?
This is were we need all bra designers/manufactures to get together and pool the resources to undertake a massive volumetric survey of women’s breasts. The data would then be worked on and a new world wide sizing convention could be established. But this is never going to happen until women say, “we will no longer buy and wear your ill fitting bras!” Time to burn your bras again ladies?
There are two techniques for volumetric measurement separated by 2200 years, Archimedes and MRI. The oldest involves asking a lot of women to get a breast wet in the name of fashion and the newest involves a very, very expensive medical machine. I understand the an MRI body scanner can be used to measure the volume of body tissue very accurately so manufactures would have to spend money and hire / buy a MRI scanner. But what about the retail end?
I understand there has been resent developments in mobile phone cameras and apps that allows a phone camera to take and create a 3D image of something, if this was extended some how then a sales assistant would simply take a few pics of a costumer and the phone would work out the customers breast volume so that the right sized bra could be selected or a variant of the 3D laser scanners used by landscapers and architects to 3D map land could be employed as an in-store customer measurement instrument.
Retailers are starting to wake up to the bra sizing mess, have a look at the attached document, it’s the shortened minutes of a conference held in England in 2009 after a damming Which magazine report looked at bra fitting and sizing. A lot of well meaning good intentions but still no action!
Finally bra underwires, if you have read my article on plus-size bras you will know there is a problem with them also. So at the same time as the MRI scanner is used to measure breast volume the breast root shape / size can also be mapped. Remember the breast root is the line were the breast tissue touches the chest wall and were the underwires of a good fitting bra should sit.

Corset and good fitting bra hugs.
Mark.