A new undercover investigation by Which? reveals that high street stores' bra services are giving customers a bum deal.
Fewer than one in three shops measured up and no service was good enough to recommend.
Researchers aged 25 to 75 visited 70 high street stores to buy an everyday bra and faced a vast range of problems. Some women were sold wildly differing sizes by different shops. In one case this varied by seven sizes from a 34FF to a 40D. Despite the difference in their age and requirements the 30 and 75-year old researchers were sold the same Wonderbra-style bra in La Senza -it fitted neither.
A quarter of fittings were rated as appalling and volunteers would have been better 'picking something off a market stall' said our experts who included a bra technologist and a principal lecturer in contour design.
Experts assessing bra-fit looked for:
- a firm but comfy under band
- correctly fitting cups, wire and strap adjustments 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
Poorly fitting bras don't just look terrible, they can also cause poor posture and neck, shoulder and back ache.
Jenny Driscoll, a senior communications manager at Which? said:
"Whatever their bra size, women want to look 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!"
Although the fitting services at Bravissimo and John Lewis came out ahead of Debenhams, House of Fraser, La Senza and Marks & Spencer, no service was good enough to recommend.
See the full report, Bra Fitting? No it isn't, in the February issue of Which? magazine.
Email us about your bra fitting experience or recommend a bra fitting service.