Moulded vs Padded/Seamed
What, exactly, is the definition of a "moulded/molded cup?"
I used to think I knew what this meant: a seamless, padded cup. One-piece foam that has been designed to be shaped like a cup. Foam that doesn't need to be cut into parts or sewn together in any way. Something like the Freya Deco or the Panache Porcelain.
However, lately I've seen it being also used to describe padded cups with seams. I've seen "moulded" being used for bras like Masquerade Rosa, Masquerade Lula Mae, Ewa Michalak CH/CHP/HP bras, and other padded bras with seams. Do people still call it "moulded" because the individual parts are moulded in some way? Or is this incorrect usage of the word?
I'm just a little confused and I don't want to purchase a bra thinking that it's moulded (seamless) when really it's just padded with seams.
3 comments
I think that there are many variables here, one is what is the underlying material building the cup, if it is a material that maintains its shape when empty then it will be called a Molded or Contour bra.
Most of the times, these are also seamless cups where they make the cup of one piece, but you could cut and re sew those pieces and would have a seamed multipart molded cup. I don't think I've seen a bra that has multiple parts but is sold as "Seamless" since you have to add sewing seams to add the pieces, but technology might show us a seamless multipart bra soon enough.
Molded does not necessarily means padded. It just means that the cup maintains its structure.
I'd think that a padded bra is such there the bottom part of the cup is thicker than the top part with the intention to fill up volume inside of the cups. Now, a padded bra does not necessarily mean a Push up bra, most push ups are padded but the padding might not have breast push up on its intent. Sometimes padding is helpful to push breasts that are too soft so they can properly fill up the cups.
To make things complicated there are some bras that have molding for only part of the cups and not all, so they'd be half molded?
I want to finish saying that no definition is in stone, just like with cup sizes, each manufacturer will decide to call their bras whatever they feel with the arguments they had that afternoon.
A molded cup is a cup of which the material has been permanaently 'pressed' into a three-dimensional shape. This material is usually foam, but it can also be 'soft' fabric. The vast majority of these bras is seamless, think T-shirt bras (molded foam) and many soft 'comfort' or nursing bras (molded fabric), but I think I have seen the seamed, 'soft' Fauve Brianna described as molded too, so there are exceptions. The quality of the shaping differs greatly. The Freya Deco (molded foam) for example give great shape, but many of the nursing bras I've tried (Anita, Triumph, etc. -- both foam and fabric) are utterly ridiculous.
'Padded' is more difficult, as is 'lined'. These terms are often used interchangeably to describe cups that have any kind of foam 'backing', not necessarily 'filler' or 'push-up' style, although in other cases that is indeed the distinction between padded and lined. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems to me that 'lined' is more of an American term to describe a 'foam backed' cup? The British way of describing such cup would generally be '(lightly) padded'?
This thread has 3 comments. Log in to read them