Buying an intimate you cannot try on

Two things are true about this category at once. It is bought almost entirely online, and it is close to the least returnable object in a wardrobe once it has touched skin.

So the choice made on a page is effectively final, and the money at stake, while small, is not nothing when the cup is wrong. This guide covers both halves: what a shop owes you by rule, and how to reduce the chance of choosing wrong in the first place.

Part 435 of Title 16 is the FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule, and it is short, old and unusually concrete. Its central requirement is a clock. A shop must ship within the time it stated, and if it stated none:

Thirty days is the default, not the norm. In practice everything in this category ships in a fraction of it, and the number matters mainly as the line past which a buyer stops waiting politely and starts having rights.

The clock does not start when you press the button. It starts on what the rule calls receipt of a properly completed order, and the definition turns on two things arriving together: the payment, and an order carrying everything needed to process and ship it. An order missing an address, or held on a declined card, has not started anything.

This is the part of the rule that does real work, because delay is far more common than non-delivery. Whoever sold it does not get to wait quietly:

Without prior demand is the phrase to remember. The obligation to offer the choice does not wait for the buyer to complain, and the offer has to carry a real date attached to it:

In other words a shop must either name a date it can stand behind or admit it does not know. Vague reassurance is the one option the rule removes. The offer also has to carry a definite revised shipping date, or say plainly that no date can be given. And if that revised date passes too, the choice has to be offered again.

An adhesive cup concentrates all the risk into one decision, and it is worth naming why.

• It cannot be tried on and put back. The adhesive face is the product. Once it has been applied and peeled, it has been used, whatever the box says.
• There is no adjustment. A conventional bra has a hook range and a strap slide. This has neither: the moulded cup is the size it is.
• The event has a date. Most of these are bought for something in the calendar, which is exactly when a delay hurts and exactly why the clock above is worth knowing.
• The sums are small enough to shrug at. Which is how people end up with three wrong cups in a drawer instead of one right one.

The way out of all four is the same: decide properly once, and give yourself time to have been wrong.

The letter on these pages is not half of a bra size. There is no band number, so the letter describes the moulded volume of the cup on its own, and that changes how to read your usual size.

The practical translation is simple. Take the cup letter from the bra that fits you best, ignore the band number entirely, and if you are between letters in ordinary bras, take the larger one. A cup slightly too large sits flat against the skin and the extra edge disappears under a dress. A cup too small rides up at the upper edge and shows exactly the line you were trying to avoid.

Where that rule breaks down is at the ends of the range. At the small end a cup that is too large has more adhesive than it needs and stays put all evening, so erring upward costs nothing. At the large end the same error costs more, because a bigger cup holds more heat and has more weight working against the adhesive.

Across the whole range there are 12 size-and-shade combinations, and the table on the front page shows which of them exist. A blank cell is not a filter returning nothing: it is a combination the maker does not currently list.

The shade decision is harder than the size decision and gets less attention, which is backwards for anything worn under a backless dress.

Studio photography flatters warm tones and flattens the differences between them, so a row of seven nudes on a screen looks more similar than seven cups in your hand. Two habits help.

1. Match to the skin that will be visible, not to your face. The chest and the face are frequently a shade apart, and the chest is what shares the frame with the cup.
2. Err slightly deeper rather than lighter. A cup a touch darker than skin reads as shadow at the edge. A cup lighter than skin reads as an object.

And accept that the names carry no ranking. Seven labels across one narrow band of warm tones, none defined anywhere, is what this category has always offered.

If the cup is for something in the calendar, work backwards rather than forwards.

1. Three weeks out, order. That leaves the thirty-day default irrelevant and a wrong choice recoverable.
2. On arrival, look before you wear. Check the cup letter on the packet against the one you ordered, and check the shade against your chest in daylight rather than under a bulb.
3. Two weeks out, wear it at home for an hour. This is also the skin test, and the reasoning behind its timing is in the guide on skin.
4. One week out, wear it for an evening. Under the actual dress if you have it. Placement problems show up on the side, not the front.
5. On the day, apply on dry bare skin and give it ten minutes before dressing. Nothing about this step is improvised well.

The whole of that timeline costs one hour of attention spread over three weeks, and it is the difference between an object that works and an object that gets blamed.

The range here runs from $13.59 to $18.99, which is a narrow spread for twelve options and a useful thing to understand.

The differences inside it are not a quality ladder. Two of the options are sold as a pair rather than a single set, which moves the pack price without changing the object. The older version with a front clasp sits a little lower than the newer one, and the newer one ships covers in the box. Cup size moves the figure slightly because more silicone costs more silicone.

What none of the differences represents is a better or worse version of the same cup, and we are not going to imply otherwise by ranking our own stock. The per-piece figure beside every price exists so a pack of two and a single set can be compared without arithmetic.

Most of what can be wrong with an order of this kind is visible before the thing is ever worn, and after it has been worn nothing can be done about any of it.

• The letter on the packet. Compare it with the letter you ordered, not with what you remember ordering. Size mix-ups are the single most common complaint in this category.
• The count. Two of these are a pair and the rest are a single set. Open the box and count before deciding anything is missing.
• The film. The clear film on the adhesive face is not packaging to discard: it is the storage surface for the life of the cup. If it is missing, say so while the order is still fresh.
• The edge. Run a finger round the rim. A cup that arrived folded in transit sometimes keeps a crease, and a creased edge lifts.
• The smell. Fresh silicone has a faint smell that airs out in a day. A strong chemical smell that does not fade is a reason to stop rather than to persist.

None of these takes longer than a moment, and all of them are easier to raise on the day the parcel lands than a fortnight later.

• A shop must ship within the time it stated, or within thirty days if it stated none, counted from a complete order with payment.
• If it cannot, it must offer the choice between waiting and a prompt refund without being asked, and name a definite revised date or admit it cannot.
• This category cannot be tried on and put back, so the page is the fitting room. Order three weeks before the event, not three days.
• Take the cup letter from the bra that fits you and drop the band number. Between letters, go up.
• Match the shade to your chest in daylight and err slightly deeper. The seven names carry no ranking.