US flash sale site Zulily.com often has sales on British and Polish big-bust brands, including Panache, Cleo, Freya, Fantasie, Kris Line, and Kinga.
I tried two Kris Line bras from the site a while back, and was not successful. But I wasn’t deterred, so I recently tried another Polish brand through the site, Kinga.
Kinga starts at band size 30/65, uses European cup scheme (so no double-letters), and goes up to K-cups depending on the model.
Zulily had two cage bras available, the Nati I and Nati II. Nati I has less coverage and stops at cup size H, which is about a UK FF (Polish D = UK D, E = DD, F = E, G = F, H = FF). These days, I mostly wear UK 28GG or 30G, which would be a Euro 30I. But Nati II was already sold out of that size, so I gambled and tried the Nati I in 30H (30FF), since I can still get away with 28G/30FF in some brands.
Sadly, the Nati I is too small in the cup for me. When you look at the manufacturer photo, the cage straps on my cleavage are located where the cup edge rests on the model. There’s also plenty of escaping tissue on the sides. It’s very clearly too small all over. Though, impressively, there’s no quad-boob! The band stretches from 23″ to 30″, so I’d say it’s a little small compared to most 30 bands, but not by much. It certainly works well for my 29″ underbust.
I think I would fit quite nicely into the Nati II in 30I, but there don’t seem to be any US retailers carrying the brand other than Zulily. So hopefully Zulily will restock sizes and have another Kinga sale at some point because I really want this bra in my life!
Aside from the fact that this bra is not my size, I have lots of positive things to note. First some details: The cups are a two-part construction, and are made of a light foam. The band has three columns of two rows of hook-and-eyes. The band also features side-stays and opaque black fabric wings and gore, with additional mesh lining in the space between the side stay and the underwire and at the gore. Finally, the cups offer pockets for teardrop-shaped push-up pads, which are included.
The cups are fairly deep. They are deeper than British brands Freya and Panache, but not as deep as Polish brands Comexim and Ewa Michalak. On my extremely projected breasts, there’s just a tiny bit of cup crushing close to the wire. The cups also feature very narrow wires—perfect for me!
I love the stretchy yet strong opaque fabric of the band, and I adore the way the gore curves up instead of being a horizontal line. Sometimes that horizontal style irritates and/or itches my skin since I have a protruding tummy. I’ve got to keep an eye out for more bras with this feature. I also like the material the shoulder straps are made of. It’s firmer than average and not so stretchy.
However, my favorite feature is, of course, the cage straps over the cleavage. I’ve been wanting a properly sized cage bra for ages, but all the ones I’ve seen so far haven’t been quite right. I want the cage strap to be completely parallel to the cup edge while following the curve of my cleavage. I also want the strap to be thin and its attachment mechanism to be flat. The strap also needs to be ultra-light and stretchy so that it doesn’t dig in.
The Nati I (and presumably II as well) ticks all those boxes! If the Nati II never comes back to Zulily, maybe I should just remove the cage strap from Nati I and attach it to a black Freya Deco.
