America’s denial of larger-cup bras

While Europe has traditionally led the lingerie market, there’s signs that the U.S. is starting to get the lingerie fever as well. Fabulous brands like Kiki de Montparnasse and the Lake and Stars are popping up everywhere, and the Chicago Tribune recently reported that the lingerie market is only second to handbags as a fast-growing apparel item. Seizing the trend, retailers like J.C. Penny, Target and Kohl’s are re-vamping their existing lingerie lines, launching new labels, and offering professional fitting services.
These retailers are hoping to usurp Victoria’s Secret’s rule over American lingerie, and they may find an Achilles heel to exploit: Victoria’s Secret is still limited to sizes below a DD, while newcomers like Le Mystere are rising in the ranks with their wider range of sizes and emphasis on fit. As more and more women avail themselves to these new fitting services and alternate brands, many will discover that their “new” bra size simply isn’t available at Victoria’s Secret. Another large brand just needs to create and maintain that bra-sizing momentum to become a major contender.
At the moment, however, few American brands have embraced bra-sizing and larger cup sizes. It’s a sore point here at Knickers that larger-cup bras are so rare in the U.S. — when I visited my family back in the U.S., I couldn’t find one national store that could sell me a G-cup bra. I wandered five shopping centres over the course of my visit, and not one had a cup size above DD. My great hope, Lane Bryant, even disappointed — they seem to equate “plus size” in the lingerie world with “large back,” instead of “large cup size.” I encountered a number of 40DDD’s in their stores, but not could find one E, F, or G-cup (they do, however, have a limited set of ranges online in these sizes). Even a plus-size retailer seems afraid to break the D barrier, choosing instead to just keep adding D’s to the bra size and expanding the back.
DISTORTED BRA PERCEPTIONS

In a way, we can understand the retailers — many women seem unable to accept a cup size larger than D. Somehow in our lives, we’ve been indoctrinated that a D+ cup is “huge,” or “fat,” and women simply don’t want that stigma attached to their breasts. Just look at this cartoon, a popular e-mail forward and video shown below:

In the video, by the time the bra size goes past DD, the breasts are at comic proportions, and H is dismissed as too ridiculous to even show. Even as a joke, this demonstrates a common misconception that DD is the biggest bra size possible, and anything beyond that is simply vulgar. In reality, this is what a 32DD cup looks like:

Not so ridiculous, huh?
That’s why we try to cover lots of larger-cup lingerie here at Knickers — if we keep telling women these cup sizes exist and they’re not for mutant sizes, hopefully more will get used to the idea!
HOPE FOR THE U.S. LARGER CUP MARKET

Of course, all hope is not lost for our larger-cup U.S. readers. They’ve been paying over the exchange rate for British labels like Rigby and Peller, Fantasie and Freya, but home-grown labels are starting to appear. Le Mystere and independent designer Jodi Gallaer are both available up to a G-cup, and Jodi plans to introduce a H-cup as well. With the success of UK brands such as Bravissimo and Freya (the latter recently entered into a 7-figure TV sponsorship deal), U.S. businesses will hopefully start to see the potential in larger-cup sizes and start offering women a better service.
We would love to hear from our U.S. readers on this topic — are you a larger cup size? What brands do you wear? Do you have a favourite label we should be checking out? Tell us in the comments!