Brassiere Essay

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A brassiere or bra, is an undergarment designed to serve basic purposes of covering, protecting, supporting and lifting a woman’s breasts. A brassiere is made of two cups, one each for the breasts, a gore (bridge or panel at the centre to join the cups), a band around the body under the bust and, wherever necessary, the cradle (frame) and shoulder straps. Most of the brassieres are made of different combinations of fabrics (cotton, polyester, nylon, satin, silk spandex, lace and others), plastic rings at the top of cups, metal or plastic wires under each cup (for under-wire brassiere), elastic, fabric, nylon, rubber, etc. shoulder straps and metal hooks. The modern technology has opened door for research and development to introduce wider range …show more content…

Bra cups are made of lace or fabric or combination of both with or without pads stitched. Cups are made in wide range of sizes, shapes, styles and for different purposes. The Upper top part of the Cup is called the Upper or Top Cup while the lower part of the Cup that supports the breast is known as the Cup. The volume of breasts a cup can hold is measured in terms of cup size displayed by an Alphabet starting from A onwards wherein Cup A is smaller than Cup B. The indicative alphabet is suffixed to the bra size in number such as 32A, 36C, 40D, etc. One can know the Cup size by deducting the Band size from the Bust size wherein the difference is assigned an Alphabet that differs from country to country and old times to the modern time. Fabric Fabric is major component of a brassiere used in the Cups, Bridge (Cradle), Wings and Bands. Of course, each of these parts has different functions so variety of fabrics can be used for Cups, Bridge, Wings and Bands. In modern times, hundreds of fabrics are used for outer side of cups, inner lining of the cups, band, motifs and even shoulder straps. Fabrics can be made of natural fibers (extracted from Animals or Plants), manmade fibers (regenerated, semi-synthetic or synthetic) or blends of natural and/or manmade

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