I’ve been thinking about my Black clients recently (I don’t know why, just popped into my head for some reason). I have a normal White amount of connection to Black folks, I suppose, in my capacities as an actor, as a businesswoman, as a loudmouthed liberal city-dweller. Nothing special there, but what is maybe a little bit interesting is how my business as a bra-fitter has not only got me intimately engaged with the bodies of women, but significantly of Black women. It’s not as sexy as it sounds, but OTOH, it’s not NOT sexy.

Almost as soon as we opened the first Jenette Bras (where, let me remind you, The Alphabet Starts at ‘D’) it became obvious that my Black ladies were going to be punching way above their weight in my customer base. Not only did you fill our cups, but so many of you brought a healthy self-love that aligned instantly with the soul of the shop that I imagined. A general lack of neurosis about extra pounds, a sense of humor around imperfections, love of adornment, willingness to pay the price to wear nice things, and the endless pleasure in talking about it: when it comes to the unashamed celebration of bosoms, y’all even got my Jewish ladies beat. In many ways these ideas about the body, reflected, articulated, and authorized by my Black customers, shaped the ethos & culture of Jenette Bras, as their buying preferences shaped our inventory.

Taking this American market sector to our European vendors has been an ongoing lesson in the workings of system bias (pro tip: follow the money). For years we begged for a wider variety of models–women of color, bigger women, older women–and we just heard “well, we have to take who the agency sends us and she has to fit the sample size which is always 34D because tradition and then this and then that…” Then one day in January last year we went to the Paris Lingerie show and the world had changed. Suddenly every company was featuring full figured and POC models. What happened? Our little voice had joined with other little voices over the years, and what had seemed impossible was suddenly possible, and even de rigeur. So, un peu de progress on the image front. On the other hand, I still need the Madison in Toffee, Deauville in Ebony, and Melody in Macchiato as year-round Basics. Here’s where representation collides with commerce. I, and many other US boutiques, could sell “nude” bras (I hate that term) for darker skin tones all day long, but what seems like huge demand to us little shopkeepers is not so convincing to them big bra factories. The American market is still more potential than realized to the best European makers, who sell more bras in little Belgium alone than in the whole USA! American women in general simply haven’t come around to the value of the product. Too many of us still want it cheap and returnable. Some little start-up tries to make something for an underserved segment and clients immediately want it in more colors, more sizes, more sustainable, oh, and when is it going on sale?

So, hmm, what is my point… I don’t know, I guess I’m becoming one of those old school power-of-the-pocketbook activists. Booker T. Washington in this Angela Davis moment. It matters where we spend our money! As we’ve been expanding our number of shops I’ve been enjoying the fractionally greater influence we’re having in the industry. I’d love to see the US bra-fitting industry be big enough one day to demand and get a full beautiful range of skin-tone bras from the top European companies. They won’t do it just to be nice. We need to come with numbers. When the dust clears from this unprecedented socio-politico-epidemiological moment, I look forward to still being here to continue our forward march–two boobs at a time:)

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