Why don't you shut the door, and close the curtains?

[venta]

I have an enquiry of a delicate nature.

I'm having difficulty finding bras which I like. At some point in the last few years, the fashion industry declared that if you are any smaller than a DD, you'll be wanting to conceal this dangerous information with a bra which is padded, shaped, and various other things.

If you go somewhere cheap and nasty like Primark, every single bra available A-C will have impressive cleavage all by itself, without even a person in it. It's terrifying. If you go somewhere posh and pricey... well, it's a little better. But even then the unpadded bras will be embroidered, beaded, be-ribboned and generally all a bit much. Most stages between Primark and posh seem similarly afflicted.

A few places will have, tucked away at the back, a small display of boxed, cheap, dead-plain bras. They won't be execiting, or available in anything other than white, but they will be functional. Interestingly, the mother reports a recent haul from this department of M&S included a bra which (in very small print) had the warning "do not wear for more than 8 hours". We could only deduce it was due to the non-slip coating on the inside of the straps, which was akin to the odd rubbery stuff they put on hold-ups. Which, incidentally, doesn't work; but I digress.

So I turn to you, the bra-wearing section of the LJ-reading public, to help out. Where can I find "nice" underwear, preferably the sort for which one can buy matching pants, which isn't padded? I'm happy with underwiring, I just don't require gel-filled, air-filled or anything-else-filled enhancement. (Except, of course, according to the underwear-making world I do require it. I just don't want it.)

I'd prefer a real live shop, as buying things which need to fit well online is a bit of a gamble.

Comments

[lnr]

I have two very similar bras from M&S both in a 38DD, one from the top of the normal range in that style and one from the bottom of the big-cups range of the same style. They're very slightly different in shape as a result, but neither is padded. So I'm pretty sure the other sizes in the small-cups range are available unpadded too.

M&Ses webpage allows you to search for bras in your size, and then "padded" or "non-padded" are options you can use to narrow down the search results.

Pretty example: http://www.marksandspencer.com/Una-Essentials-Ribbon-Stripe-Non-Padded/dp/B003X0FBR6

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's interesting - the website seems to have a much more extensive range than even quite large branches of M&S. Certainly our local one has nothing like that in the real!

[lnr]

You reminded me I did really need to go bra shopping myself. And I did only find two non-padded ones I liked in black, but there were quite a lot of other colours too. You could always have stuff delivered to the store to try on though - I noticed there were several signs up around the Cambridge shop saying "see more online", so they clearly don't try to carry all possible stock in all stores.

I bought jeans too :)