Top Nurse Reveals Why Women Over 70 Are Trashing Their Bras for Good and What They Wear Instead (Hint: Most Bras Go Back to a 1914 Patent)

📜 The Four Old Parts

WHY MY LADIES ARE TRASHING THEIR BRAS

I printed everything and laid the pages across the table in the order the parts came. The bra most of us know goes back to that 1914 patent. After that, the parts arrived one at a time, and next to each one I wrote what it does to a woman of 80, because that’s who I see.

The straps. 1914. Two shoulder straps, sewn for a girl of about 19 to wear to a party. On a soft shoulder at 80, two thin straps dig a ditch.

The cups. The cup letters, A, B, C and D, came in during the 1930s. A cup cut for a high, firm shape gapes at the top on a softer one, and the band climbs up to fill the gap.

The wire. The underwire was patented in 1931. It caught on in the 1950s. It was bent for a chest that sits high. On a chest that sits lower it doesn’t go under you. It sits on you, and you feel it by lunch.

The hooks. Bands that fasten with hooks in the back go back to the 1930s. They’re still in the middle of your back, where you can’t see them, and you work them with the fingers you have now.

By 1940 the bra already had its cups, its two straps, its hooks in the back and its wire. Lace came and went. Colors changed every season. Foam came in. The four parts stayed where they were put.

I want to be fair here. Nobody sat down and decided to make life hard for a woman of 80. The people who make bras and the women I visit never meet. But I’ll give you one nurse’s opinion after 26 years, and you can take it for what it is: as far as I can tell, nobody ever went back and remade it for a woman over 70.

Then I turned a page and found the part that made me put my tea down.

📏 Why Nothing in Your Drawer Fits

MOST BRAS ARE TRACED FROM ONE 34B

Most bras start as one sample in one size, usually a 34B. Every other size is traced bigger or smaller from that one pattern.

Read that twice. It explains your drawer.

One pattern, traced out for the bigger sizes and traced in for the smaller ones, like a coat cut for one woman and let out for everybody else. The coat gets wider. It never gets a different shape. A 34B cut for a firm, high chest is still the same pattern after it’s been traced out to a 44DD. It’s bigger. It still isn’t yours.

It isn’t even the same 34B from one store to the next. Bra sizes aren’t the same from one brand to the next. A 34B in one store can fit like a different size in another. So you buy four sizes, keep the one that pinches least, and decide the fault is yours.

I sat there and thought about every woman I’d seen that week, each with a drawer of sizes and a band that climbed by noon. Every bra you ever owned was traced from one body. It was never yours.

💛 Read This Part Twice

IT WAS NEVER YOUR BODY. IT WAS THE BRA.

Here is what 26 years of walking into bedrooms didn’t teach me, and one night at a kitchen table did.

Your slacks come in your size, and your shoes come in a wide. Nobody ever re-cut the bra for the body you have now. They added cup letters and new colors and kept tracing the same old pattern.

And your body did what every body does. As we get older, the firm tissue inside the breast shrinks and turns softer, and the tissue that keeps it up stretches. So it sits lower and feels softer. That isn’t a fault. That’s a woman who got this far. The bra is the one thing in the room that never changed.

That’s why the front-close bra didn’t fix it. The hooks moved to the front and the band still climbed. That’s why the stretchy one off the TV lost its shape by supper, and the “comfort” one with the wide band still left a red line, because wide or thin, a band is a band. That’s why the sports bra pressed you into one flat lump, and the cami with the shelf in it gave you no support at all. Every fix you ever bought was the same four parts in a new box, the same pattern under different lace.

So when a woman tells me nothing fits her anymore, I tell her now that nothing was ever made for her, and that’s all that was ever wrong. Evelyn said it best the day I told her: “I am old and proud of it!”

That was the end of the anger for me. What came after is the part worth reading, and it starts with the woman who finally made one for us.

✂️ Then She Picked Up Her Shears

SUSIE READ MY PAGES AND SAID ONE THING

I was taking care of Susie’s mother that winter. Susie is 67 and wears an XL. Before this, she spent years at one of the biggest makers of women’s underwear and bras. She signed papers when she left, so she never names them, and I don’t ask.

I handed her my printout in her mother’s front hall. She read every page standing up. She didn’t argue with one line of it. She’d watched it from the inside: the way one pattern gets traced bigger and smaller, the way the lace changes while the parts don’t.

She folded the pages and said one thing.

“Then I’ll start over on your ladies.”

That weekend she started cutting. She put the old pattern away and started from the women instead. She measured my ladies, 70 to 89, in their own front rooms, and cut the first one around them. Then she did it again, and again. Every sample was tried on women that age before she let one be sold, and I drove most of them over myself. Some came back with pins in them. One came back with “the straps slide” written on a note in Evelyn’s hand, and the next one didn’t slide.

What came out of it isn’t a bra. It’s a soft tank with the bra built in, and it supports you a different way, because nothing in it hangs on one part. I can show you on three fingers.

🖐️ Three Things You Can Count on Your Fingers

WHAT MY LADIES WEAR INSTEAD OF A BRA

One. What they wear is a soft tank with the bra built in, and the support is spread across all of it. There are molded cups built into the front, wide flat straps, and a long soft body that runs from under your arms to past your waist. Each one carries a little of the weight. In a bra, two thin straps and one tight strip carry all of it, which is why those are the three spots that hurt by lunch.

Two. Nothing fastens behind you. No hooks, no clasp, no wire. Arms in first, pull it down over your head, tug it over your hips and tuck it in. Nothing goes up high and nothing goes behind your back.

Three. Nothing squeezes your ribs. There is no band, not even a soft one. The long body lies flat against you and tucks into your slacks, so nothing creeps up and nothing digs in.

That’s all of it. Instead of hoisting you up to your chin, it keeps you where you belong, covered, with a smooth shape under a blouse. And because it was never traced from a 34B, there’s no bra math. You order the size of the T-shirt you wear, S to 6XL.

Susie’s says more than 50,000 women have ordered it since. I can’t speak for 50,000. I can speak for my ladies, because I was in the room when each of them put it on, and that’s the part I want to tell you.

🕛 What I Saw First

BY LUNCH SHE FORGOT IT WAS ON

Evelyn, 82, was the first, because she’s the one who asked. She pulled it on at her bedroom mirror at 7 in the morning and tucked it into her slacks. No hooks to hunt for. She looked at me in the mirror and said, “That’s it?”

That’s it.

At noon she pushed a cart through the grocery store and never once reached back for a band. At 4, the hour the band always won, when she’d make an excuse and go home, she stayed at her daughter’s for supper. At bedtime she was pulling back the covers when she remembered it was on.

Here’s why that happens. A bra gets tighter every hour you sit, because two thin straps and one tight strip carry the whole load, and the load doesn’t get lighter at 4 in the afternoon. There’s no strip here. The weight sits a little bit everywhere, so nothing gets tighter as the day goes on.

“By 7 at night I usually can’t wait to get the wretched thing off,” Evelyn told me the next morning. “This time I was in bed before I remembered I had it on.”

I’ve heard that line, or one like it, in a dozen houses since. It’s the thing my ladies tell me first, before anything about how it looks. They forget it’s on. After 50 years of counting the hours until they could take the thing off, that’s the whole prize.

🪝 Two Old Parts, Gone

NOTHING TO FASTEN AND NOTHING TO SWEAT UNDER

Joyce, 84, was the one I was worried about. When I come in on Thursdays she’s on the edge of the bed with her arms bent behind her, hunting for a hook she can’t see. “My bad hands,” she calls them.

Her hands are fine for 84. Nearly half of Americans 65 and older have arthritis, the CDC says. The hooks are the odd part, still in the middle of your back, right where they were put in the 1930s.

The first morning Joyce had hers, I made myself stay in the doorway. Arms in, over her head, tug, tuck. One try. She stood up, smoothed the front, and looked down at her hands.

“Well,” she said, “I guess there was nothing wrong with you two.”

The band went the same way the hooks did. Jean, 74, told me about her birthday lunch last spring, at a restaurant with her daughter. By the main course she had one hand pressed flat to her side under the table, where the band sat, and the skin under it had been damp since the parking lot. She smiled through the cake and asked to leave before dessert. In the car she called it a headache.

“I get hot and sweaty under it,” is how my ladies say it. A tight strip of elastic around your ribs traps the heat, the skin under it stays wet, and it’s still red at bedtime. Take the strip away and there’s nothing to trap it.

Jean went back to the same restaurant in the fall. Main course, cake, dessert and coffee.

“I’m not going to tell you it feels like air,” she said. “But there’s no wet line, and I stayed for the whole thing.”

🤝 The Two Tests I Didn’t Think It Would Pass

SUPPORT WITH NO WIRE, A SMOOTH BACK WITH NO BAND

Helen, 77, wears a 3XL, and she told Susie flat out that nothing without a wire had ever supported her. I believed her. I’d seen her drawer.

The wire was bent for a chest that sits high and round. On a softer, fuller chest it doesn’t sit under you. It sits on you. Susie’s tank shares the weight instead. The molded cups keep the shape in front, the wide flat straps spread the load across the shoulders, and the long soft body gives support from under the arms to past the waist, so no one spot digs in. The girls stay in place without anything cutting in to keep them there.

Helen wore hers to her grandson’s birthday dinner, four hours on her feet and at the table, and carried the cake in herself.

“I kept waiting for it to give up,” she said. “It never gave up the whole night, and I didn’t touch a strap once.”

The back was the other test. One of my ladies, 79, has a fitted blue blouse she stopped wearing years ago because of the roll across her back in every family picture. She blamed her weight. They all do. It was the band. A tight strip pressed into soft skin pushes it up and over itself. On a firm young back the band lies flat, which is the back it was cut for. On an older back it digs in and makes a shelf.

There’s no band in this tank, not even a soft one, so there’s nothing to push against. She put the blue blouse on over it and had her daughter take a picture from behind. Then she asked for a second one, to be sure.

“It was never fat, was it, Peggy,” she said. “It was the band.”

🚪 You Gave Up the Parts, Not the Support

IF YOU GAVE UP BRAS YEARS AGO

A lot of my ladies quit bras before I ever met them. “I will never again submit to that torture,” one of them told me, and I don’t blame her.

But going without has its own catch. The old parts hurt, so she quit. Now she has no support at all, she’s sure something shows, so she hides. For two years one of them answered every knock at her door with “Just a minute!” and a dash to the bedroom for a cardigan. The first bra was sewn for a girl at a party, and giving it up still left her living by its rules.

The molded cups in this tank keep a smooth, covered shape under a blouse, and the long body runs smooth to the waist. Nothing shows.

Now the knock comes and she opens the door. The mail carrier, her neighbor, me.

“Covered and contained,” she told me. “I look like myself with a blouse on, and nobody can tell a thing.”

🛒 “I’ve Tried All of Them and Still Searching”

WHY THE OTHER TANKS LET HER DOWN

You’re right. Most of them don’t work. My ladies have a drawer of those too: the shelf cami that gave no support, the tank that rode up by noon, the one with loose pads that ended up in the dryer lint.

It’s the same old story in a new box. Those tanks are cut on the same young pattern, in S, M and L. They’re short, so they ride up. The “bra” inside is a thin strip of elastic, a band by another name, only weaker.

This one was cut around women 70 to 89 and is ordered by shirt size, S to 6XL. The cups are real molded cups. The straps are wide and flat. And it’s cut long on purpose, so it tucks into your slacks and stays there. Evelyn keeps her good dishes on the top shelf. She reached up for the gravy boat at Sunday supper, both arms over her head, and the tank didn’t move an inch. The first thing she did when she came down was check.

The one difference is where the pattern came from. Those were traced from the same old 34B. This one was cut around women like you.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Since Susie started selling it, I’ve heard from women all over the country who wear it. Here are four of them, with the pictures they sent.

THE QUESTIONS WOMEN ASK ME FIRST

When I tell one of my ladies about it, she asks me the same few things. Here are my answers.

“Is Susie a real person?”

Yes. I took care of her mother, and I’ve sat at her table more times than I can count. She’s 67, she wears an XL, and she spent years at one of the biggest makers of women’s underwear and bras before she started this.

“I already gave up bras. Why would I want this?”

Because you gave up the parts, not the support. There are no hooks, no band and no wire here. It’s a tank top you pull on. You get some support back, and nothing shows.

“Will it support me if I’m big up top?”

Helen wears a 3XL and she was the hardest test. It won’t hoist you up like a wire does. It keeps you where you belong, with the weight shared across the cups, the straps and the body of the tank, so nothing digs in.

“What size do I order?”

The size of the T-shirt you wear. There’s no band number and no cup letter. It comes in S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, 5XL and 6XL, in 8 colors, and the size chart is right above the sizes on Susie’s page. Susie wears an XL.

“I have a bad shoulder. Can I get it on?”

Joyce has two bad hands and gets hers on in one try. Sit on the edge of the bed. Arms in first, then pull it down over your head, then tug it over your hips and tuck it in. You don’t lift anything high, and there’s nothing to fasten.

“Does it ride up?”

Tuck it in and it stays down. It’s cut long on purpose, so it goes into your slacks and stays there. Untucked, like any top, it can creep up when you bend.

“How do I wash it?”

Gentle cycle, cold water. Lay it flat to dry, or tumble dry on low. The cups are built in, so there’s nothing to take out and nothing to lose.

🏡 One Woman Who Read the Dates

WHO YOU’RE BUYING FROM

My ladies ask me this before anything else. Who’s on the other end of this?

Susie is 67. She wears an XL. Before Susie’s, she spent years at one of the biggest makers of women’s underwear and bras, and she signed papers when she left, so she never names them.

When I handed her my printout, she didn’t argue with it. She started over on my ladies, and every sample was tried on women 70 to 89 before she sold one. There was no other way to do it. You can’t trace a woman of 80 from a girl of 19, so she stopped tracing.

Susie’s is one woman who read the dates and decided somebody had to start over.

🗄️ Evelyn Ordered Three

WHAT’S IN THE DRAWER NOW

One woman wrote to Susie’s about her old bra drawer and called it “a graveyard full of uncomfortable and ill-fitting bras.” Evelyn laughed when I read her that. She had one of those drawers too.

She ordered three, one of each color. One on, one in the wash, one folded for lunch with her sister. Most of my ladies do it that way, because once the first one goes on in the morning, the other two are what they wear the rest of the week.

It comes in eight colors: Bean Paste, Black, Burgundy, Coffee, Grey, Nude, Olive Green and White. Right now Susie’s is running Black Friday Early Access: Buy 2, Get 1 Free. If you want five, it’s Buy 3, Get 2 Free. Shipping is free in the US, and you can mix the colors any way you like.

The popular sizes go first. If yours is there today, that’s when I’d get it.

⚠️ Only at susies.co

WHY YOU WON’T FIND IT ON AMAZON

Susie’s is sold on susies.co and nowhere else. Not on Amazon, not at Walmart, not in a store.

There are look-alikes out there, and a few of them even lifted Susie’s own pictures. What arrives in the mail is a thin shelf cami, cut on the same young pattern as everything else in your drawer. Nothing about the old pattern changed because somebody copied a photo.

So get it from susies.co. That’s the only place the 90-Day Guarantee and the Buy 2, Get 1 Free apply.

🌅 Two Mornings

THE WAY I SEE IT NOW

I see two mornings, because I’ve stood in both.

In one, you wake up tomorrow and put on a bra built on a patent from before you were born. The hooks are behind you. The band climbs by ten. You feel the wire at lunch, and by supper you’re counting the hours until you can take the thing off. Or it stays in the drawer, the cardigan stays by the door, and you say “Just a minute” to whoever knocks.

In the other, you put your arms in, pull it over, tuck it in and go run your errands. You have lunch. You stay for dessert. At bedtime you’re pulling back the covers when you remember it’s on.

My ladies like to know what happens when they click, so here it is.

1. The button takes you to Susie’s page. 2. You pick the size of the T-shirt you wear. There are no cup letters. 3. You pick your colors. The third one is free. 4. It comes to your door with a tracking number in your email, and the 90-Day Guarantee comes with it.

You’re still reading, so part of you already knows. The other part has a drawer full of bras that say you tried. Both parts are right. One of them has been waiting since 1914 for somebody to get the thing right, and this year somebody did.

I don’t know how clearly you can picture six months from now, looking back on today as the day the drawer started to empty. Evelyn doesn’t remember deciding. She remembers the first morning she forgot it was on.

Peggy

P.S.

If you scrolled straight down here, this is the whole story in five lines.

The bra in your drawer goes back to a patent from before you were born. Its four parts were in place by 1940, every size traced from one 34B sample, and as far as I can tell nobody went back to remake it for a woman over 70. Nothing fit, and it was never your body. Susie, 67, who spent years inside one of the biggest makers of women’s underwear and bras, started over on women 70 to 89. What she made is a soft tank with the bra built in, no band, no hooks, no wire, ordered by your T-shirt size, S to 6XL.

Black Friday Early Access: Buy 2, Get 1 Free. Free US shipping. 90-Day Guarantee.