The Different Lingerie Buying Habits of European and American Women
I meet regularly with various lingerie manufacturer representatives. It’s always interesting though, when I meet with manufacturers who are not based in the United States. For example, Chantelle, Fantasie of England, and Panache are all designed in Europe. Without a doubt, European women have different taste and preferences when it comes to bras and lingerie.
The first curious comment from these manufacturers is that women from the UK have considerably larger breast sizes. The average cup size is a D rather than the C in the US. Now, their band size is not unusual – UK women are in good shape from all their walking. But, in general, a British woman has larger breasts.
European women buy lots of white and ivory underwear. The concept of nude underwear has either not caught on, or they dismiss it. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, European women are very accustomed to hand-washing their lingerie and then putting it up to dry. US women have more washers and dryers than European women. Truly white undergarments are a sign of them being clean. If they get a little dingy, you bleach them or throw them out. If you have nude colored underwear, there is no gauge as to whether or not it’s getting dingy. The color ivory to European women is considered their version of nude. It can still look clean, but has enough cream to better match their skin tone.
Now, having said this, European women are big purchasers of lingerie in wild colors – purple, red, citrus, chartreuse. And they don’t care if it shows under their clothing. American women buy very little lingerie that is colored. In fact, colored lingerie makes up less than 8% of lingerie sales in the United States. American women buy mostly nude and black bras and panties. You will see beautiful colored lingerie in US department stores, but it’s really put in there just to show some contrast and keep the department from looking like a sea of nude. Chances are if you like a colored piece of lingerie, hold off buying because it will be on sale shortly.
American women are obsessed with seamless, contoured and invisible underwear. We don’t want anyone to see any sign of lingerie under any of our clothing. We are on a constant quest for that lingerie item that won’t show. European women, by contrast, could care less. Let there be seams showing, let their lace show through, who cares if someone sees a panty line? European women love buying pretty lacy and expensive lingerie and don’t care if it shows or not.
Viva la Difference!
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Interesting! I’ve also noticed that European and US women seem to favor different silhouettes from their bras- but I have no real data to back this up!
Comment by Kelly
July 13th, 2008 @ 6:24 pm
You bring up an interesting point. It is a known fact that women in Europe – especially the UK – have larger breast size (cup size) than US women. Therefore, they want more variety in their silhouettes. This is also why most European lingerie brands come in larger cup sizes.
Comment by Tomima
July 17th, 2008 @ 9:59 am
You know guys, I would say the statement about British woman having bigger breast than American ones is not really true… It’s because most women in the States don’t know their correct bra size (to tell the truth it’s like that in UK too – only about 15% wear correct sizes), and they just squeeze and flatten their breasts in too small cups in bras that have too wide bands and don’t provide enough support. If suddenly all of them started too wear correct sizes you would start to have more G+ cups than you would ever imagine. Myself, I wear 30GG, 32G, 32GG or 32H depending on elasticity of the band and actual size of the cup and I don’t consider my boobs gigantic, they are just average. I measure slightly less than 30 inches under breasts and about 41 inches around breasts…
Comment by AleksandraLM
September 30th, 2009 @ 1:10 pm
There might be a difference in availability. You say ‘c’ is average – but ‘c’ of what range? A-DD? In UK there are A-K (or even more) and there’s more consciousness of the fact that larger cups are available at all.
Comment by Srebrna
October 1st, 2009 @ 4:18 am
The article is very interesting indeed. Especially that it’s totally different point of view than mine…
I’ve noticed before that in America bras are sold in limited sizes and colours. It’s interesting to to know that the colour underwear is only 8% sales… As for the cup sizes, there must be something magical in the letter D, if instead of for example 36H you have 36DDDDDD
;D
The size issue:
I used to wear 34C and used only padded black bras, until I have discovered that 28G [or 30FF] is actually much better [I can jump, runand above all I look slimmer]… And that I don’t need a padded bra, because a beautiful see-through lace bra will provide excelent support as long as it’s in a correct size.
I don’t believe that women in UK have bigger breasts than in US. Well, still most of the lingerie shops don’t sell bras with band smaller than 32 and cups bigger than D. And I have seen one funny shop in the center of London where bras are sold in… ehem… small, medium and big…
A women wearing a correct 26DD will have tiny breasts, whereas a women with 40DD will have much bigger breasts, in terms of volume. Cup size measures only 1 dimention and breast seem big if their volume is big. So my 28G is nothing huge.
About colours:
I know that in European countries women do wear nude bras, so my opinion is not representative… but I personally hate nude bras. For me they seem extremely boring and totally unsexy. The closest to nude I have is oyster Arabella by Freya. But, for the record, I have only one white bra [and it's not pure white anyways].
Does that help in understanding European women better?
=)
P.S. And by the way — who bleaches their bras!?! It’s a blasphemy!!
P.P.S. And I don’t think that European women consider ivory as a version of nude… I’d say we consider ivory as …ivory.
Comment by varulv
October 2nd, 2009 @ 4:43 pm
Proper size, Tomina, that’s the key to having nice boobs, irrespective of how big they actually are. And I know you have a range of sizes in your store, at the beginning of my “bra size awereness” I bough I white Freya Zeta 30G from you. I already grew out of it, though…
Comment by AleksandraLM
October 6th, 2009 @ 3:13 am