Optifit Bras – The Shape Of Things To Come?

What you’re looking at are Optifit bras - a concept developed by Sue McDonald and her sister Linda over 25 years and completely obliterated in one fell swoop on the latest episode of the BBC’s Dragons Den.

“It was surreal” said Sue. “You come out of the lift and you look at them sitting there. It was just like watching them on the telly. I wasn’t nervous at all though – we always knew it would be a risk taking it on the show because it is for women only and is a product that truly goes against the current grain.”
At the time of my visit to the Optifit studio in Uppermill, Saddleworth the show hadn’t yet been aired and whilst Sue remained tight lipped about the outcome, her passion and drive for her invention would have suggested the full investment of £40,000 plus 10 per cent of shares to one or more of the Dragons.

Unfortunately it wasn’t to be as Duncan Bannatyne scoffed “resistance from the industry means your product doesn’t work” whilst Deborah Meaden turned her nose up at the idea of having to (God forbid) measure her own breasts. A puzzled looking Kelly Hoppen appeared to be working out how to count.

It was over before it had even begun, but watching you couldn’t help get the impression that the reaction from the Dragons represented everything that’s wrong with Society’s view of breasts in general.
As Sue explained: “Breasts are taboo. Historically foundation wear was designed to support the fashion designs of that particular decade and we still treat our breasts as a fashion accessory now. Yet talk to a woman who has had breast cancer and it hits home that you’ve got to look after your breasts. Problem is, no one teaches you how to do that.”

What Dragon’s Den probably edited out of the footage was that Sue undertook a research degree to get to the bottom of the numerical and alphabetical sizing system of measuring bra size which, for the 80 per cent of us who have been wearing the wrong bra size our entire adult lives, just doesn’t add up. Remember our article on finding the right size bra? There was and still is no right size bra.

“There’s no consistency whatsoever” said Sue. “After gaining a lot of experience I realised it’s actually the bra that’s not right, so I set about trying to find out what is a 34, 36 and 38? And what exactly is an A, B, C, D?

“When measuring for a bra, you measure around your rib cage then add four to an even number and five to an odd number. That’s your bra size. So if you measure 29 inches around the rib cage, you’ll add five and that makes you 34. But why?

“Then you measure around the fullest part of your breast. If that measures say 34 inches, it is the same as the ribcage size so therefore you’re an A. If you measure 35, that is one inch bigger than your rib cage so you’re a B, and so on. But again, why?”
Sue’s research led her back through history, through the “pointy scary ones and the roundy bouncy ones” as women dressed their breasts in order to reflect the ideal of the time, from Marilyn Monroe to Twiggy to Pamela Anderson.

“The fashion industry is not interested in your body and how it works. It’s like painfully tight foot binding in China, damaging neck rings in parts of Africa and Asia and of course corsets in Victorian times which crushed your soft organs. We’re never good enough as we are.”

Even more alarmingly, Sue found conventional bras to be adapted from men’s WWI military uniform measurements.

Bra measurements were originally designed using the male chest circumference and adding a few inches depth to allow for the volume of the breast. However, Sue believes this is not only a completely ludicrous way of measuring a part of the body that has no defined or uniform shape, but that it is also based on a deeply unrealistic view of the female form.