demi cup, full cup, T-shirt style, molded contour, seamless, minimiser, full-figured, strapless, training, three-part support, balconette, one-shoulder, maternity, nursing, underwire, non-underwire, racerback, sports, front-closure, full coverage, convertible, plunge, push-up, longline, halter...
Whew. So many bra styles and so many that don't fit.
Ladies, do you suffer from dreaded "back fat", slipping straps, cup spills or collapsed cups? It's not your fault. Your support system is all wrong.
Queen Elizabeth II's longtime bra maker and bra fitter says that most women - 85 per cent - aren't wearing the right size. "It's because they've gone to a shop that doesn't know how to fit them properly," June Kenton told a London newspaper after her retirement last year.
Kenton recalled dreading her first royal visit in 1960. "Can you imagine what it was like? Most people first meet the queen when she's wearing an evening dress, but not me."
The queen may have been nervous, too.
When you take off your blouse in front of a woman, it's a little intimidating," said Yvonne Alicea, who owns Yve's Fine Lingerie in Roseville, California. "I tell women, 'I look at boobs all day, you don't have anything I haven't seen'."It's not about pretty bras, although I have some gorgeous collections, it's about the fit," Alicea said.
"Women (with large breasts) come in with indentations an inch deep in their shoulders and in pain and don't know how to resolve the problem. They get migraines from the pressure. I've had women cry because they finally find some relief."
Leave it to Oprah Winfrey to tell the world something is amiss beneath our blouses.
Determined to get us out of our ill-fitting underpinnings, she hosted a "bra intervention" show in 2005, bringing in 8000 bras and 35 professional fitters from Nordstrom to work with 240 female audience members