High support. Let me start that again, properly, because the distinction matters and people blur it: this is a high-support bra, which is a different category of garment from a medium-support bra, not a stronger version of one. Different construction, different intent, different result. If you have been making do with medium and telling yourself it is fine, this is the correction.
The sizing is where I want to spend the time, because adidas has done it correctly here and almost nobody notices. It is not sold as small-medium-large.
It is sold by band and cup together — extra small A–B, small A–B, medium C–D, large C–D, extra large C–D and so on — which means the band and the cup are being fitted as two separate measurements, because they are two separate measurements. This one does not.
A garment that treats them as one is guessing about half of you.
Beyond that: a tight fit by design, built for intensive training, in an elastane-rich blend that gives the firm, held feel high support requires. Firm is the correct word. Not tight, not restrictive. Firm.
Manchester rewards this sort of attention, which is why I keep going back. The John Rylands Library first — a Gothic reading room in pink sandstone, and the pink is not a stylistic choice, it is Cumbrian stone, and it has darkened unevenly, which I find myself thinking about at odd hours.
The Town Hall clock tower on Albert Square: eighty-five metres, and I have seen it given as eighty-seven in print, and it is eighty-five.
The People's History Museum next, holding the largest collection of trade union banners in the country, hand-painted, conserved in a room kept at a controlled humidity — somebody there is very serious about numbers and I respect them enormously.
And Castlefield, where the rebuilt Roman fort gate stands under Victorian rail viaducts, and I should say rebuilt, because it is a reconstruction, and the sign says so, and people still call it Roman.
“It is a reconstruction. The sign says so.
Say the true thing even when the false thing is prettier.”
High support, fitted by band and cup. Measure properly and it will be right.
Buy on Amazon