Bra fittings don’t measure up, says Which?
25 January 2010
High street stores’ bra fitting services are busted, says consumer champion Which?. An undercover investigation revealed that fewer than one in three measured* up and no shop’s service was good enough to recommend.
Which? sent 11 researchers, aged 25 – 75 with a DD cup size or larger**, to a total of 70 specialist and high street stores to buy an everyday bra. A quarter of the fittings were appalling*** with our experts suggesting the volunteers would have been better ‘picking something off a market stall’.
Some of the women were sold wildly different sizes by different shops, in one case this varied by seven sizes from a 34FF to 40D. Another was sold exactly the same bra in two House of Fraser branches but in sizes 34C and 34F, both of which were a terrible fit. Despite the difference in age and requirements, the 30 and 75-year-old researchers were sold the same Wonderbra-style bra in La Senza – it fitted neither.
Badly fitted bras don’t just look awful – they can also cause neck, shoulder and back ache and poor posture.
Jenny Driscoll, Which?, says:
“Whatever their bra size, women want to look good and feel good. Heading to the high street for a fitting might seem like a simple solution, but the results we found were shocking - one bra was so poorly fitted there was room for a pair of socks in the cups!
“If stores are going to offer this service to customers they need to up their game: do it properly or don’t do it at all.”
John Lewis and Bravissimo received the best overall scores, but still weren’t good enough to recommend.
Notes to Editor
The full report, Bra fitting? No it isn’t, is from the February 2010 issue of Which? magazine.
For a copy of the report, further information, images or an interview, please contact Nicole Gross on nicole.gross@which.co.uk or 0207 770 7564.
*29% of the bras sold to the Which? volunteers were rated as a fit by our experts. The stores visited were John Lewis, Bravissimo, Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, La Senza and House of Fraser.
**Plus-sizes were chosen because female Which? readers said they were most interested in how stores cope with fitting more buxom women. Two researchers with smaller busts were also sent to stores and the results were equally poor.
***Consultant bra technologist Gillian Spencer and lecturer and technical designer Laura Savery assessed the fit of bras sold to the researchers, with David Morris – Principal lecturer in Contour Design at De Montford University – also on the panel of experts.
The Which? criteria included:
- A firm but comfortable underband
- Correctly-fitting cups, wire and correctly adjusted straps, so the weight of the breasts was lifted off the rib-cage and shoulders and onto the lower back
- Wires that fit around the root of the breasts rather than cutting across the delicate tissue
