T
he bra we know today
was patented by Mary
Phelps Jacobs in 1914.
However, there are
many accounts that
date back to ancient times of
women who used tied fabrics to
bind their breasts. The French
embraced corset undergarments
in the 1500’s, and in 1869,
the corset was split into two
different pieces. Countless
advancements have been made
throughout the centuries to
turn ancient fabric bindings into
the bra we recognize today, yet
one common denominator has
existed since the very beginning:
bra pain.
Most females begin to
experience that poking, nagging
pain in their mid-late teens.
It happens around the time
that training and sports bras
get replaced by the ever-
beloved underwire bra, a bra
that often leaves indentations
under one’s breasts, or breaks
and leaves small bruises below
one’s underarm. Ill-fitting bras
have also been linked to health
problems, like headaches, back
issues, restrictive breathing and
poor posture. When you take
into account that 80% of women
are wearing the wrong size bra,
it’s no wonder why so many
women have bra issues. Luckily,
Sue McDonald, Founder and
Managing Director of Optifit Bra,
decided to tackle this problem
from a different angle, thus
reinventing the bra as we know
it.
cDonald began
advocating for
women’s bra health
and proper fit well
before her UK-based company
was born. She worked as an
National Health Services (NHS,
UK) bra fitter for 20 years,
helping pregnant, nursing, and
post-mastectomy patients find
bras that fit. She would often
cut and stitch the bras to ensure
they properly fit her individual
patients. Daniel Wilkens of Love
U Magazine was able to interview
McDonald one-on-one and
discover why she felt compelled
to rethink the basics of bra
design.
“When I looked into the
origins of where the fitting
system originally came from,
I was quite surprised to find
out that 34 - 36 - 38 - 40 was
the chest circumference of a
man,” she explains. “It came
from standardized chest
measurements of males from
M