Why Claire won't shop at La Senza anymore

A short while ago Claire wanted to buy a new bra so she popped into La Senza, picked up her usual size, a 36C and went to try it on. It turned out to be too small, which she was wasn't surprised by as bra sizes tend to differ from shop to shop. Outside the dressing room 2 sales assistants were chatting, so Claire told her the bra was a bit small, that she usually wears a 36C and thought she'd need a bigger cup size. The assistant took one look at her, fully clothed and declared "there's no way you're a 36C in any shop. You're at least a 36F." Claire said that she'd never needed that size, that she'd been measured before and told she was a 36C and the vast majority of her bras are a 36C and fit her perfectly. But the assistant insisted she must be a 36F, that whoever had measured her before had managed to somehow be 3 cup sizes out and that she could now be measured 'correctly'. Claire said she'd rather not and left.

Now this may not sound that awful written down but the assistant was incredibly rude and patronising when she was talking to Claire. The assistants entire manner seemed to be trying to make Claire feel stupid and almost laughing at her for being so ignorant of her size. And insisting that all the 36C bras Claire owns from various brands must either be way off in size or not fit Claire properly when in fact they're fine.

Claire makes her own clothes, she knows her shape and size well and can measure herself. But she's been measured for a bra before because she deals more with dress sizes and trusts professional bra fitters, who have told her she's a 36C. She owns a lot of bras that are a 36C and fit fine. She's made her own bra before and, shock horror, turned out to be a 36C. And yet this person was insisting that she knew better when all she'd done is taken one look at Claire in a bulky jumper.

Claire is 5 foot nothing tall and pleasantly plump. On a 5 foot frame a 36C will look a lot bigger than on someone who is taller. For instance I'm about 5 foot 8 and have 36FF breasts and if you looked at both of us dressed I think my tits would only look a little bigger than Claire's because we have completely different frames. So it also upset Claire because it seemed like the assistant had made the assumption that because she's slightly overweight she must have a 'plus size' cup size.  (I.e. overweight people only wear plus sizes and 'normal' sized people only wear standard sizes which isn't true either way. And anything over a DD cup size is for fatties)

If Claire was a 36F that would make her basically the same size as me which is just laughable, I wish we were the same size so i could nick her clothes but unfortunately her dresses won't do the  whole way up on me as her full breast measurement is about 8 inches smaller than mine!

It's not that Claire really cares what her bra measurement is, if she really was a 36F she wouldn't care as long as the bra fitted. But you can't tell someone's wearing the wrong bra size by looking at them fully clothed (unless they're wearing something very close fitting and the bra is causing the breasts to look odd, neither of which was true in Claire's case). And it was the patronising, belittling way the assistant spoke to Claire, almost sneering at her.

The right way to handle the situation would be to say something like 'oh bra sizes do tend to differ, you may be a size or 2 bigger than usual in here, I could measure you to see or we could just try some different sizes to see what works on you' which would be polite and a lot more sensible than just saying 'you are wrong and whoever measured you is wrong and you're definately 2 sizes bigger than you think' which is really bad customer service!

And also La Senza do run small! Everyone I know who buys bras from there has to go up from their regular size. At one point I was actually a G in their sizes which I've neer been anywhere else.

I'm not saying I'm never going to shop there myself because I really like their bras (despite them being oddly sized) and swimwear. I find they give my boobs a nice shape and proper uplift. It's nice that they have a lot of really pretty 'fashion' bras that go up to a GG cup size. But it's definately left a sour taste in my mouth and I can absolutely understand why Claire is boycotting it.

What do you think? Would you be upset if you had a similar experience?