Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
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A couple of cups, straps and maybe some underwire. A bra seems like a fairly uncomplicated thing.
It is not.
A good bra can be a feat of engineering, one that flatters, doing whatever it is you'd want your bra to do (lift, pad, separate, create cleavage, etc.) while looking good and being totally comfortable. Most women spend most of their lives in bras, and yet estimates for the percentage of us wearing the wrong bra size go as high as the 80s, depending on where you look, which seems crazy. Except it's not. Any female will tell you that at one time or another -- if not perpetually -- she has struggled with the foundation garment.
When I heard that Rebecca Apsan, expert bra fitter and owner of New York's La Petite Coquette, a high-end lingerie boutique, was coming to town to promote her book, "The Lingerie Handbook" (Workman, $13.95, 185 pages), I couldn't resist meeting with her. If anyone can give the straight dope on bras and why they're so freakin' complicated, it's Apsan, who has been fitting celebs (Salma Hayek, Liv Tyler, Heather Graham, Jennifer Connelly) at the boutique she opened in 1979.
I took along a couple of volunteers who are having bra issues to meet with Apsan, who is appropriately possessed of bedroom eyes and a slightly husky, Demi Moore-esque voice.
"There's no science to bra fitting," says Apsan, 58, as we walk into Victoria's Secret, that wonderland of bright colors and glittery, fruity body lotion aimed at the young (or young at heart). "Anyone who tells you that there is, with all the measuring tapes and stuff, is wrong. The most important thing is to try on as many bras as you can."
At the very pink VS, Apsan finds a bright pink Ipex number ($42), with shaped, contoured cups and underwire. The thing is bound to flatter a smaller chest. Heck, standing on its own, it's a 36B, no filling required.
"These are good for smaller, young women who really want to look sexy. ... A little padding under the breast is good, too. It pushes the breasts out, like they're on a platter," Apsan says with a little shimmy.
Yes, this woman is very comfortable with breasts. She may even be more comfortable with your breasts than you are.
As we proceed to Nordstrom, she says she often sees women wearing expensive clothing with cheap or ill-fitting lingerie, which ruins the whole look.
"Whatever you wear, if you're wearing the right bra and right panties, and your clothes lie flat on you, you'll look good. You see women tugging at their panties ... or doing this (she makes the motion of tugging a bra cup down)? If your breasts keep falling out from the bottom of your underwire, it's because you're wearing one that's too small."
In a bra larger than a C or D cup, a proper, supportive bra has about 54 components. But you have to be careful about getting expert help, says Apsan.
For example, at Nordstrom, we struck gold with one bra fitter, whereas another told one of our shoppers, who complained that the back band of a bra for which she'd been fitted was tight, that the fitters "only fit the front" of the body.
And yet we all seem to have backs, don't we?
Even when we're expertly fitted, though, it seems some of us are reluctant to follow through and buy the right bra because, says Apsan, we're in bra denial. We don't want to admit our true size, be it larger than we think we are or smaller.
As with shoes and jeans, such vanity has no place in the world of foundation garments. They have to fit perfectly.
At Macy's, Apsan peruses a wall of sports bras, shaking her head.
"No, no. I hate that one. I'd never wear this one. Oh, what's this?"
She grabs a Champion Seamless Double Dry ($40) and starts tugging at its straps.
"Now this is good. This I'd wear. Look," she says, pointing to the stretchy panels between the cups and the back strap that form a web of support. "I like that it has flexibility."
It's not pretty, this Champion thing. It looks like a cross between a double jock strap and a straightjacket, but it works.
It's hardly the kind of thing that inspired Apsan to go into the business. Throughout her childhood, she and her two sisters bathed in sweet scents every night and were sent to bed in soft nightgowns. That was the beginning of her love affair with lingerie, which she sees as "beautiful things to sleep in, sumptuous fabrics and the art of seduction."
It's a daily indulgence, really, which doesn't have to be very expensive.
"A $300 bra is only worth it if it makes you feel like a million bucks," she says.
Even though we don't all have the uber-fancy kinds, chances are most of us have a few favorite pieces we seldom wear, which, says Apsan, is a real shame.
"You should take those things that you have in a drawer, the ones you save for special occasions, and wear them every day," says the lingerie diva. "It'll empower you. It'll transform you."
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