La Senza fitting review

Today I visited La Senza (Plymouth). Wow, what a lot of neon and padding. Most of the rails seemed to only contain 34Bs so I asked the assistant what cup size they went up to. She (let’s stick with the ‘J’ theme and call her Julia) informed me that they stock up to an E cup and asked me if I thought I might be bigger than that. I played a little dumb and as I was wearing my 32G (band fits like a small 30!) Ewa Michalak Karmelki said that I wasn’t sure of size as this was a ‘foreign bra’.

Julie kindly offered me a fitting to see if I could possibly fit into their range. I was asked to remove my top (so far so good, as I had heard stories about people being measured over their clothes) and then she took my under bust measurement. She held the tape fairly tightly (much more so than in M&S) and I could see it was at 30”. However, she then turned to a chart on the wall and proclaimed that I fell between sizes and that I was a 36D or 36DD. I felt the bra gloom descend upon me.

Julia bought me a Cotton Lightly Lined Plunge in white in 36DD to try. It was absolutely massive in the back, just as bad as in M&S which surprised me a little as I’d heard that La Senza bras came up very small in the band. Obviously, the cups didn’t really cover me at all and I had some cracking overspill. Julie came back in and asked me how I felt. I said that the back was very loose (it was really riding up) and the cups were too small (bulging and centre gore not sitting flat). To give Julie her due she said that I could try a 34E but that the cup would still be too small. She very kindly suggested that I try HoF or Debenhams for a bigger range of sizes.

Julia was very pleasant and helpful and to be fair she agreed that the cup was too small for me. However, I didn’t really get the feeling she knew much about smaller band sizes and how they should fit properly. Logically, I don’t know how she could have any experience in good fitting as their size charts are totally skewing everything.

If La Senza stopped adding inches and stocked an realistic size range (e.g. 26A – 38G) they could be a really good source of bras for the younger customer. Adding inches is preventing them from offering what could be a great service. Their staff are extremely pleasant and are being let down by bad training and wrong information.