Last week, I wrote about a cotton bra from Kalyani (now Faubourg 183) that turned out to be unsuccessful. This week I’ll follow up with another cotton bra from Bestform (formerly Vanity Fair). Unfortunately, this one wasn’t successful either.

The particular bra is the Bestform “Rich Cotton” balconette. Here’s the photo from Figleaves.com (from which I purchased it):

I didn’t have very high hopes for this garment, since it has a large number of reviews but a rating of only 3.5 stars out of 5. But like I said last week, for $20 and 60% cotton, I definitely had to try it anyways. Plus, it looks really nice in the photo. The bit of mesh at the top of the cups and the little buttons on the center gore give it a bit of interest instead of being totally plain.

So first impressions: very high quality. The cups are a nice, heavy cotton. The wings are also quite substantiala somewhat heavy, smooth polyester blend. The mesh at the top of the cups is soft, not scratchy.

Second impression: The band fits true to size. This is actually unfortunate for me, because I ordered a 30 since they don’t make 28s. But it wasn’t so loose that it was unwearable, so I still would’ve kept it if the cups were right. Too bad the fit was terrible! I do have to start with the caveat that I gained enough weight over the holidays to bump me up a cup size (but not a band size…go figure), and I ordered this in my usual size instead of taking that weight gain into account (oops!), so I was actually trying on one cup size too small. However, that being said, the shape was still just bizarre. It wasn’t just pointy, it was square. Here is a crude drawing of the profile it created:

Taking into account the fact that I wasn’t wearing the correct size, I still think it would’ve had a squarish-shape due to the somewhat low placement of the horizontal seam. It’s just weird. I’ve never had a bra give me this shape before, correct sizing or otherwise.

Now, every woman’s breasts are a different shape, and some boobs are more malleable than others, and, as such, can fit into pointier styles. But for me, that is not the case. Even though the cups were one size small, I wasn’t even filling them in all the way. There was a pocket of empty space along the horizontal seam. This is actually something that is mentioned in some of the reviews on Figleaves, so again I don’t think it’s purely due to me trying the wrong size. And a pocket of empty space equals visible seams under clothes! So it’s another no-go. The search for the perfect full-busted cotton bra continues…