Dive Brief:

• Retailers are increasingly joining specialty boutiques in providing women with help finding a bra that fits, reports Business of Fashion.

• The long-lived push-up bra trend led by lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret appears to be on the outs with customers increasingly more concerned with fit.

• Bra sales in the U.S. have fallen 3% in the past year to $6.5 billion.

Dive Insight:

This seems to be another win for the athleisure effect—with women increasingly comfortable wearing their yoga wear on the street, it’s no wonder they’d like to be more comfortable underneath as well. While boutiques in New York and Paris have long specialized in measuring and bespoke manufacture of brassieres, in recent years mass retailers and manufacturers have also begun to sell more on comfort and fit.

Jockey for example has spent the past decade devising new sizes and to help accommodate a wider range of women’s shape and sizes. And bra-fitting gurus have attempted to work their magic via the web in what the New York Times calls the “Everest of online retail challenges,” even employing algorithms to meet the challenge. 

It’s an area of retail that can be difficult because women, in an effort to avoid the humiliation and hassle of trying on the garments, will often stick to the brand and styles that work for them. But the likes of Jockey, Lululemon, and others are working to make athletic bras prettier and pretty bras more comfortable.

“It has to be innovation beyond the artificial,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group Inc., told Business of Fashion. “You’ve got to make it worth their while.”