For as long as I can remember having boobs, it has been impossible to buy bras for them. No matter the brand, no matter the price, no matter the cup size, they have always been either too loose or too tight. And this is all regardless of whether the smiling Victoriaâs Secret saleswoman told me they were a âperfect fit.â From puberty to now, Iâve been like Goldilocks with boobs, searching in vain for a bra thatâs not too big and not too small, but one that fits just right.
According to Michelle Lam, the CEO of the lingerie company True&Co, I am far from the only Boobilocks to encounter this problem. In fact, 81 percent of women, she claims, are wearing the wrong cup size. Thatâs because most bra manufacturers are influenced by the preconception of what an âidealâ pair of boobs looks like.Â
âEveryone is designing for that âidealâ body type,â she told me. âWhat weâre saying is, âNo. Thereâs an incredible diversity of body types out there, and thereâs a bra for every woman to make her look gorgeous.ââ
As CEO of True&Co, a lingerie company that has been referred to as âNetflix for your boobsâ and uses algorithms to determine which bra is the best fit for every woman, Lam knows what sheâs talking about when it comes to womenâs bodies. Over the past two years, True&Co has been assembling âboob dataâ from more than 500,000 women, using a personalized quiz that goes beyond asking women about their cup sizes. (Are your boobs âshallowâ or âdeepâ? Are you âwell-roundedâ? Which one is bigger: left or right?)
Using that data, the company has identified a whopping 6,000 different variations of breast size, which it’s used to compile a color-coded system it’s calling the âTrueSpectrum.â Instead of classifying women by cup size, women take the quiz to find out whether theyâre a Sapphire (shallow, bottom) or a Citrine (full, round), among others.
Ladies, take the quiz. You will never think so much about your boobs in your life. And I’m here to tell you, you will learn something.Â
I am a âViolet,â or shallow and well-rounded; apparently, only 4 percent of women share this shape, which partially explains why bra shopping has always been so difficult for me. The description on True&Coâs fit quiz, however, makes me feel slightly better: âYour breasts are perfectly rounded, and are sleek and chic.â Why thank you!Â
True&Co has used this data to launch its âUniformâ line, which Lam refers to as âlive in luxury basics for every day wear.â The line of intimates, which are mostly in the $40 to $50 range, are designed to be comfortable yet slightly provocative, which is how Lam describes True&Coâs average customer, as determined by the data. She has a name, too: Jennifer.
âWhen we ask our customers what kind of lingerie represents you best, theyâre not thinking a G-String. Theyâre thinking black lace, slightly sexy, working woman set,â Lam says. âWomen donât want push-upsânot Jennifer, at least.â
âJenniferâ and True&Co were born when Lam moved to San Francisco a few years ago. (Previously, she worked for Microsoft and the investment firm Bain Capital.) She realized she hadnât bought a bra in quite some time and went to a department store to try some on.Â
âI was sitting in a fitting room and I didnât think my body was abnormal in any way,â she says. âBut I looked at myself in the mirror with every bra I put on, and I felt like I was the worst-looking person in the world.â
Through conversations with friends, Lam realized that there was âa huge swath of women out there who have had bad experiences in the bra marketplace,â in part to the preponderance of poorly made or ill-fitting bras. She says that in True&Coâs testing process, only one in seven bras are up to quality standards.
That’s partly because thereâs a fair amount of architecture and engineering that goes into the design of the bra. Unlike other womenâs ready-wear, like T-shirts or underwear, bras have to do at least three jobs at onceâsupporting, lifting, strapping downâwhile simultaneously being aesthetically appealing. Lam says this has led most women to âreduce the enjoyment of the bra to a functional product. So many women will just choose a nude bra, because they don’t want to deal with the hassle. We wanted to make one that makes their eyes light up, that makes them look and feel the most beautiful.â
Lam launched True&Co in 2012, allowing shoppers to take the fit quiz and choose from popular brands like Calvin Klein, before the company launched its own line, She Walks In Beauty And Light, last year. Â The signature braâa dark, striped, lightly padded pieceâis extremely popular and accounts for a quarter of True&Coâs revenue. When I saw it last week, it looked both comfortable and sexy, despite the somewhat silly name. But the S-word is one that Lam and True&Co try to shy away from.
âWe feel like that word has been overused with this garment. Entire brands have been built on this premise, that thatâs all that a bra is,â says Lam, referring to a certain Canada-based lingerie mega-corporation. âWe try to talk about confidence, not sexy.â
But despite True&Coâs aversion to describing their bras as âsexy,â the term comes up multiple times in my conversation with Lam, usually with the modifier âslightlyâ (the company likes to describe Jennifer, its aggregate customer, as âslightly sexy.”) Thatâs in part because bras are intended to be worn under your clothes, giving them an added layer of sensual mystiqueâhey, theyâre not called intimates for nothingâand because theyâve been so aggressively sexualized in our culture, mostly by men.
Unsurprisingly, Lam is frustrated by the implication that thereâs something inherently sexualized about a bra. âWe have half a million women all over the world who have taken the fit quiz and 7 million data points and a series of bras for women during their daily life, and then manboys leave comments on Facebook like, âThe best bra in the world is one thatâs on my floor,ââ she says, rolling her eyes. âBoth genders take it to totally different places.â
But with its more clinical, data-based approach to the lingerie market, True&Co is hoping that widespread perception will change. Currently, its gathering even more data from women all over the world, in the hopes of catering to boob types it hasn’t built bras for yet. (Lam says that while the fit quiz algorithm can match eight out of 10 women, there are outliers, such as the âMulberryâ shapeâwomen with smaller curvatures and âfuller sidesââand transgender MTF customers, many of whom are smaller chested.)
With this approach, True&Co hopes it can build a bra for every one of the 16,000 body types it’s found, and maybe even blow the aforementioned Canada-based lingerie mega-corporation (which recently launched a quiz similar to True&Coâs on its site) out of the water.
âItâs validation,â Lam says. Theyâre recognizing this is the new way to shop for both men and women and asking what they want, but they canât do what we do… they know how many blue bras theyâve sold, so they can say, âOh, next season we can buy a bunch of new bras.â But we know who bought the blue bras and why. It may not have been the fact that it was blue. [With our data], we get a picture of what women want before it exists.”
Correction: An earlier version of this post said True&Co has identified 16,000 breast shapes using their data. It is actually 6,000.Â
Photo via True&Co