Last month, I held a pop up shop in Kansas at The Heavy Hanger, which is a big bust lingerie boutique. I arrived in Wichita the day before the event, so I had some time to shop. I made a pit stop at Banana Republic and saw this amazing wrap dress on the sale rack. Usually, wrap dresses and big boobs go together but, just to be safe, I wanted to try it on first. So I go into the dressing room and put on the dress and, as usual, MESS from the waist up. As you can see, my bra is playing peek-a-boo in two places: at the cleavage and arm holes. Since the difference between the bust and underbust of the dress is small, there's a lot of fabric that's gathered at the waist by the belt because the difference between my bust and underbust is large. Also, the mess on top caused the bottom to bunch and not line up correctly. I've blogged here, here, and here about busty girl problems when it comes to apparel, so I shouldn't have been surprise that this Banana Republic dress didn't fit. But, seriously, a wrap dress!? Wrap dresses are usually okay. However, this one is sleeveless and larger busts tend to pull the arm holes forward, which exposes bra bands. This issue is further exacerbated because the fabric has no stretch. Another issue is the steep angles at the front of the bodice, which is conservative on a B cup but will expose cleavage and/or the bra of a bustier woman.
I'm not picking on Banana Republic, because nearly all apparel brands do not take into account women with large breasts. This is why I created Exclusively Kristen: so that busty women don't have to look like A MESS from the waist up.
