I used to think it was relatively easy and that I was a 34C, I mentioned my cup size to a friend who works in lingerie and she almost spat her drink at me in shock, “YOU ARE NOT A C! YOU ARE AT LEAST A D!”
This came as a surprise to me as my girlfriend wears a DD but her boobs are waaaay bigger than mine. Maybe we have both been kidding ourselves. I have to drop in to my friend’s work and get fitted, apparently you shouldn’t have substantial cleavage if it’s not a push up bra.
I don’t have much problem with size, but shape is a real challenge for me. I like round, not pointy on cone like or seamed. It seems like if you want any nip coverage at all you have to let the bra decide what your shape will be. Hate that.
I have had good luck with buying them online from Aerie, most of the bras are about $35, lined, pretty, and the size is consistent from one bra to the next.
Some women’s breasts also go down a cup size or so depending on the time of the month.
So hard I stopped wearing one. I went to several different retail shops to be told my boobs were anywhere from a D cup to an H with equally varying numerical measurements. My boobs are really not that big–certainly not a goddamn H–and they’re pretty small proportionally to the rest of me. Maybe between a C/D if I had to guess, and there’s an atypically large gap between them (I can’t do cleavage even though smaller girls with the same size of boob could do it easily–they’re just not close enough together no matter how hard they’re lifted and pushed or pulled).
I tried on every conceivable size of bra at Lane Bryant, and none of them fit right. I’m convinced that I would have to get a bra custom-fit to my measurements if I were to get one that fit properly. I’m much happier bra-less than I am in a constricting bra. I just wear an undershirt instead. I have small nipple “points” if you will (the areola is large but the nipple itself is tiny even when erect). So I don’t blast headlights at people, lol
Lula Lu Petites is great for small cup sizes. The Timpa bras I got there are the only underwires I can call comfortable. I measure out to a 34A, really take a 34B, and in this bra I’m a 34C, but it fits my shape very well. I completely understand about not being able to buy online, if you’re not in the bay area.
About 90% of what **Lynn ** says here minus the underwire hatred (MUST Have them, cannot get good support without them for me), plus just a few other thoughts.
It’s the weirdest thing, bra manufacturers seem to think that if a woman has large breasts, she must then also be large all over, and vice versa.
So often if a woman is a DDD she can’t find a bra with a band size smaller than 36. And women who are AAAs often can’t find bras with band sizes bigger than say 38.
Bra sizes more “custom” than that are available, but at a hell of a lot more money than the department store ones.
And…what is up with D, DD, DDD, etc.? I get measured for a bra and it turns out my ideal size is 32G. So does it go D, DD, DDD, G? Or is it D, DD, DDD, E, F, G? I mean, what the hell, you don’t starting doubling the letters until you’ve exhausted the letters, right?
Well, I know where to find 'em now. The thing is that I would like a minimizer. That’s really hard in my size because, apparently, most people who are my size are that way on purpose, and they don’t want minimizers or they wouldn’t have gone that big in the first place.
Some bra manufacturers use DD instead of E, DDD instead of F. Some will put something like 42DD(E) on the package. I don’t know why they do this. Maybe this is an effort to sell more bras.
They’re all in this together, it’s a conspiracy, I tells ya! Just like it’s a conspiracy when you find THE perfect style, then they discontinue it.
I’d quote Lynn’s first post, only I’d have to quote it in full and I don’t like doing that.
In my case, the extra-wide base means no tolerance for underwire. The owner of the store where I used to buy my bras had retired, leaving the store to her idiot daughter who promptly ran it into the ground; the first time I went there after the change of hands, Ms Curly Lip informed me that she did not have any no-underwire… “but you have lots of Playtex and Peter Pan, I know both brands make no-wires, don’t you have any?” “those are out of fashion” - me and my unfashionable tits had to start looking elsewhere.
About three years ago I changed sizes: I used to be a 90/75, and I think I really should be a 95/75 now, but the codes used for sizes have also changed, so the first thing I need when I’m looking for bras is someone who can translate that to what the boxes say; there seem to be very few brands which have any size labeled 75C (I think that’s what it translates to, only not everywhere… any bra sold in Spain carries codes for 4 or 5 different sizing systems), but also, and since the actual measurements aren’t the same as what the label says, I often end up getting 80Bs and the occasional one in my old size (75B I think, I know I was a B-cup). Thankfully and after a bad experience with someone who was supposed to be an expert in sizings but who used a different method from anybody else and who gave me 115/75 (honey, I could fit both tits in one of these cups, if I happened to be able to squeeze them together!) and two years of “you know, these don’t… quite fit”, last year I located another good corsetier in the town where my family lives: one of the things I did last Christmas was buy 5 new bras.
Oh, and it’s one of those cases where you can’t just say “I like this model, please give me one each in whisky, skin, white and black” (why are there no other colors in my size unless they have underwires? Hey Playtex, I want navy! My panties are red and green and yellow and fuchsia and orange… but bras? Hah.) - nope, you have to try every single one, and you may find out that one is too long on the band while another one is ok but needs to be hooked at a different position 
You can even get that with the exact same model in the exact same size, same color and same batch!
Checked: the bra I have on right now says: E-P 100B, FR 100B, GR-EU 85B, UK 38B. Not only does my ribcage no way measure 85cm, you need a gorramn GPS to navigate through that.
I totally agree with this. I thought I was a 36C for years until I was sized properly at Rigby and Peller and it has made an amazing difference. Now that I know I’m a 32DD I can go into M&S or wherever and pick up everyday bras that I know will fit just off the rack.
I have two Rigby & Peller bras that are my “good” ones - one is “everyday” but really well made and comfy, which was £65, and one is my sports bra, which was £28. I’ve had them both for about 18months and the sports bra just now gave up, although the everyday one is still going strong. I definitely believe in investing in high quality bras that last a long time. I do have a few fun (bright polka dots and things)/date night ones from M&S, but I don’t wear those every day.
In the UK, DD and E are two different sizes. I’m not sure why.
Because… they’re different sizes, E is bigger? UK sizing goes D, DD, E (no EE) F, FF, G, GG, H, HH, J, JJ, K, KK… and then you’re probably out of luck. I’ve found the odd L and even an M once, but they’re really hard to find, even in supposed specialist shops.
The minimizer I like–which I generally have to special order, and even if they have one in the store with the right size it may not work, and if they have two in the store that say they’re the same size, they’re always different–says “32 XXPS” and how the hell do bra fitters know all this stuff? DD can be E, but not necessarily, and so forth, and then we get into XXPS territory (this one is manufactured in New York by people in a union BTW).
When you have nothing to do but fold bras all day, what else is there to learn? 
I knew way more about movies when I worked at a video store, just out of sheer boredom!
I never understood this either, this thing about [some high %] of women are wearing the wrong size bra. Okay, well, there are only so many sizes. Even if I’m not wearing the most optimal size imaginable, I’m pretty sure I’m somewhere in the ballpark, and the ballpark is not THAT variable. There are countless different TYPES of bras, but there are only so many sizes. If I think I’m a 34D, maybe a 32DD or a 36C would fit better, but I’m pretty sure I’m not actually a 40F or a 30AA, so the statistic just makes no sense to me. If there are three sizes I’m deciding between, even by chance I should be right 33% of the time.
Not one of those sites you linked carried anything near my size. Once you go past a 38 or 40 band size you’re pretty much screwed as far as “pretty” goes 
Ah, but the 32XXPSes do not fold! They don’t pack very well, either.
(Okay, I will modify your sentence to read: “When you have nothing to do but HANG BRAS ON HANGERS and PUT THE BOXES INTO DRAWERS all day…”
Very difficult. Just like clothing for women seemingly has no standardization, bras offer only a little bit more in terms of standardized sizing. Sure, we have band sizes and cup sizes, but I have been inaccurately measured at several places in my time. One woman at VS tried convincing me I was a 34 C. There are many people on this board who know me in real life, and they would all laugh at that estimation. I told her no, thank you, please bring me the D cup because a C will never work. She wouldn’t believe me and kept bringing me 34C until I stepped out of the dressing room with quadro-boob and she finally relented and got me the D cup.
Continuing in that vein, there are so many manufacturers out there that even a slight difference in how a bra is cut can skew how the bra fits. The bottom line is there is so much variation in breast size, placement on the chest, chest circumference, and the cut of the bra that for a piece of clothing you are expected to wear for the majority of your waking life, it is difficult to find one that has the correct fit for you.
I just remembered an anecdote about my sister. She was complaining about how she couldn’t find a bra that fit, and actually burst into tears describing how even the A-cup was way too big and she’d never be able to wear anything but sports bras. And this was a 24 year old woman, not a 14 year old kid.
Anyway, while my sister is not what you’d call busty, I was pretty sure she wasn’t less than an A-cup. I asked her what band size she was trying on, and she said a 36. I said “There’s no way you’re a 36, because I’m not a 36 and you’re skinnier than I am!”
She insisted that she was indeed a 36 and could not be persuaded otherwise. I asked her if she was sure she’d been measuring herself correctly and even explained the method, and she swore she’d done it right and that she was definitely a 36. She absolutely refused to consider any other possibility, so I finally gave up and just told her that she should ask a bra fitter at the store to measure her and recommend something.
A while later I was visiting and saw my sister had new bras hanging up in the bathroom. (She always had bras hanging in the bathroom – she’d hang them up to dry and then never put them away.) I said “Oh, I see you did get some new bras. What size are they?” Turns out she actually measured to a 32B, which would have been about my guess. I refrained from saying “Did I not tell you there was no way you were a 36?”, which was probably wise, but to this day I have no idea why she’d been so firmly convinced that she was two band sizes bigger than she actually was.