Have you ever found yourself counting cups so you can go to another brand to find the nth cup?

So that is what we're doing for you now. We're calling it Cup Index.

How does it work

The cup index can be understood as the cup position on the size table, so we'll start counting at A cups being index 1, D cups being index 4 (mostly) and so on. There will be tricky situations if a brand starts at E cup, is that after D or after DD? We'll figure it out so you don't have to, then assign the correct index to it.

We'll make sure to add these indexes to all the bras that need one. Brands like Enell, Lynx or other models that come in SML sizes should not have one (if they do, do not use it) . For brands like SugarShape or Maidenform's new sizing, we'll add it manually so you don't have to do table overlapping in your head, but just use the numbers.

We are normalizing all bands to use standard UK/US numbers, so you can compare a EU 75 with a UK 34 with a FR 90, and we're using numbers from "00" for AAA cups, "0" for AA cups, 1 for A cups and increasing one at the time for all the other sizes using the particular rules each brand has. Regardless of what twisted version of US sizing they decided to use one year and change the next year (I'm looking at you Panache, Curvy Kate, Parfait, etc...).

How to use it

You will now find next to the sizes an Index size that looks like this "34:7". This means this bra is the 7th cup in band 34. So now when you go to another brand or model you will just need to look for the same index size, regardless of what the cups for that manufacturer are.

Think of sizes as an index size.

Where to find it

After so many years a "Browse by size" section has been added. And it uses index sizes.

Browse bras by size

You can also search for index sizes to get better results, listings search is also ready for this. You can search for cups only, using ":8" will show all sizes with 8th cup regardless of the band ;) .

Important caveats

Something very important to keep in mind about this, is that it is still not a completely safe method. For more accurate comparisons still use the bra's measurements.

There are some brands that use 2cm increase in the cups instead of 1 inch. And others will use 4cm increase! So cup counting will sum up to a lot of error quickly, specially for higher cups.

You cannot use this to compare with models that don't do standard band/cup sizing, so if you want to know your size at Enell (Great sport bras!) you cannot use this, you should be using measurements.

More

We'll be developing more about this, so keep and eye on Twitter, Facebook and the adventures to know the latest.