Cecil I’m ashamed of the lack of effort put forth in your answer to this. You obviously didn’t check with any retailers specializing in clothes for larger women. My wife, at one point in her life, was unfortunate enough to wear a 40I sized bra. While they were impossible to find at your nearby Victoria’s Secret or Sears, they could still be purchsed comercially without requiring them to be custom made or special ordered. Thus one can conclude that your guesses were a little smaller than what can actually be obtained.
In Cecil’s “What’s the largest commercially available bra size?”, link listed above, Unca Cece’s research found a maximum commercially available size of 52E.
Although “I” comes after “E”, 52 is significantly greater that 40. Can anyone tell us whether 40I or 52E would be considered “bigger”?
I thought they size from A to Z.
They measure a woman under her breasts & then again around the middle part of the breast, subtract one from the other & the number of inches is the bra size. However, that does not refer to Datsun bras, like the 280Z.
Cecil’s column mentions a a 48DD.Does the double letter mean they got past I, etc., ran out of single letters at Z, then started a new series of double letters?
I think I saw this on an A&E special about lingerie (could have been Discovery) but from what I recall, the letter sizing of a bra cup size is pretty much arbitrary- although an a, b, c, d, or dd will be pretty much the same between companies. Anecdotally, I dated a woman who had rather large breasts. She had her breasts reduced to approximately DDD. One company called them DDD, one called them F and one called them EE (She showed me the different bras and the little tags that told the size).
Though never dating a woman requiring a bra of such Wagnerian proportions, I have had occasion to buy one. It was manufactured by Maidenform and represented to me to be the largest size offered anywhere. It was listed as a 52II – mammoth, to be sure. But it admirably served its intended purpose as covers for my twins’ snowmobiles.
Cup size, while varying from maker to maker, is realy how big the breast is. Like volume wise.
The number is how big the torso is. The length of the band around the body, with out account for the breast. I think measured just below the breast.
So a Pam Anderson type might be a 25D. Where as a heavier woman with small breasts might be a 53B.
I would assume the query was about cup size, in which case the 40I would be bigger. If he was looking for shear (so to speak) fabric use, the the 52E would, I assume, be bigger. Well, a 52H would be any way.
I’ve never had occasion to look for the largest bra size myself, being in the somewhat standard 36C-ish range, and not overly curious. I would imagine, however, that if someone made a matrix with the numbers going down the side and the letters running across (kind of like multiplication tables), then put an “x” in the box of each combination readily available, you could make up some formula for which is the biggest (multiply the number of columns across by the number of rows down, and the highest answer wins). The trick is, what order?
The numbers are standardized - a 32 will fit around 32 inches of torso, a 52 will fit around 52 inches… but the letters are kind of odd. The smallest, for instance, is AAA, then AA, A, B, C, D, then it gets wierd again - there’s DD, DDD, E, EE, EEE, F, FF, but I don’t know that they are in exactly that order. Beyond that, I am way out of my range of knowledge.
A related question - in beauty pageants when measurements were given - was the chest measurement given to include breasts, or just the torso underneath (like bra size)? I would imagine it included the actual breasts themselves, but if so, who measured? Was there an old lady backstage warming the ends of her tape measure, or did they just trust the contestants?
A somewhat unrelated and useless story - whenever my mother sees a lady with an extaordinarily large set of hooters, she tells me, “That woman would be an excellent candidate for breast reduction surgery.” Tell her, Mom, tell HER!
Okay, this is how the sizing works, to my understanding. The number portion of the size is the circumference of the torso just under the breasts. The cup size is based on the difference in size between the circumference of the area around the largest part of the breasts and the circumference of the torso. If there’s a 1" difference between the two sizes, the person is an A cup. 2" difference in circumference is a B cup, etc. Thus a person wearing an I cup would have a circumference around the fullest area of the breasts that is 9" larger than the circumference of the person in question’s torso just under the breasts. lso in the question of multiple letters (i.e DD, DDD, etc.) Its another way of saying sizes larger or smaller of the more common cups sizes. AA=about 1/2 A, DD=E, DDD=F, EE=G, XXX=Hard Core etc…
Yes, the Cup Size of a bra is determined by measuring beneath the breasts across the torso, then measuring across the fullest part of the bust (while wearing a bra) and subtracting one from the other. The difference determines the cup size – usually.
However, the under-the-breast number is not necessarily the accurate band size – the number. I can’t find my links right now that go into great detail on how to size for a proper bra fit, but I’ll post them later when I can find them.
As to the largest size bras available without custom fitting and sewing, most of my catalogs will carry up to a G, H, and I cups, from 34 - 52.
I can wear an H or an I IF I buy a size that’s way too big and cut it down (cups are very proportional to the band size) By measurements, I wear a 38 JJ, or an L. For some reason, most charts skip K. Buying bras isn’t a matter of ordering or going to the store. It’s a miserable, horrible trial that involves lots of being poked and manipulated and measured over and over.
Jeez, you have all my sympathy. I thought I
had a hard time with my 42Gs.
Side note: While it seems to me that in
Denmark in general there arent as many women
with huge breasts as in the US (or at least
the part of it I lived in), I have a much
easier time finding comfortable bras that
fit well and dont look like something my
grandmother would wear. Any expatriate
Yanks out there notice anything similar?
NO! Don’t tell her! I get these types of comments all the time. It is hard to imagine being told something much more rude than that! Breast reduction surgery indeed! Thank you very much, I will just say no to a major surgery that alters a part ofme that gives me no trouble and seems to please my SO very well.
Although I normally wear a 48 H I recently found a 46DDD sports bra that fits reasonable well. It does not support well enough to job in, but is more comfortable than the others I wear.
I know this is an old thread, but I just happened upon it today. Unless I overlooked a post, no one has correctly explained how bra size is determined. Granted, this information is not incredibly useful since you’ve got to try the bra on anyway, but I figure there may be some adolescent girls or male-to-female transsexuals who’d like to know where to start looking.
To determine your band size (the number), measure around your torso just beneath your breasts. Take the length in inches and – this is the part that no one here remembered! – add five. My torso is 28 inches around, so I should wear a size 33 bra. Note that I said “should”, not “do”. Bras do not come in odd-numbered sizes, so I usually wear a 34.
Finding your cup size (the letter) is as other posters described it. You measure around your breasts at the nipple then subtract your band size from this number. The difference between the two numbers will tell you your cup size. If the two numbers are equal you are an AA or AAA cup. If the measurement across your nipples is one inch larger than your band size, you are an A cup. Two inches bigger is a B cup, three a C, and four a D. For larger cup sizes things are not as standardized; for instance, the next size up after D can be called a DD or an E.
As complicated as this all seems, it is actually the most sensible sizing method used for any sort of women’s clothing. Formal gowns, for instance, seem to be sized at random.
When I used to work representing indigent people trying to get Social Security disability, I had the opportunity to represent a woman whose major disability for back problems. In her case, as her doctor documented, her back pain was exacerbated by her large breasts (the doc said they weighed 25 lbs. - I assume this was an estimate, although he may have placed them on a scale).
The judge’s opinion showed he was a bottle baby. He granted my client disability, but his opinion seemed to indicate that her ONLY problem was her large breasts. Well, regardless, the client was happy with her SS checks.