We're changing women's lives, and can change yours, too.
Maybe you've always had larger-than-average-breasts. Maybe you are going through perimenopause, or menopause. Or maybe you have a curvy body type, or your weight has changed recently and you find yourself with a larger bust to manage.
If you can relate to any of these, you're in the right place. Managing a bigger bust isn't easy, and it comes with a lot of baggage. Some of us have carried it for a long time and through every age and stage of life. We've spent a lot of time wrangling these boobs and searching for a better bra or bra alternative. We've gotten our hopes up with each new product only to have those hopes dashed by a reality that never delivered on the promise.
I used to think that better clothing options were out there and I just couldn’t find them. But after years of searching I eventually learned that there just weren't better options. Everything out there was a compromise on comfort, or on shape and support. That's what started my journey to create something better: supportive clothing designed for fuller bust, plus size, and over-40 bodies.
As a full-busted woman myself, I understand that you may be skeptical. But once you try it, you might just never wear a bra again!
I invented supportive clothing to give women like us a truly new and different choice: the choice to be bra-free AND supported. Most of us think we could never leave the house without a bra (imagining awkward images of being vulnerably exposed). But when I re-imagined what bust support looks and feels like, I realized it's possible to design an option that frees you from the discomfort and negative health impacts of bras while it still supports, secures, and shapes your body.
Let me share what I have heard from the full-busted women who have tried Embrago:
1. You will be surprised and delighted at how great you can look without a bra.
Women from all over the country – large-busted, mature-busted (40+), or both – first try on Embrago with the same skepticism and low expectations that I know so well from my own experiences.
They head into the dressing room doubtfully, expecting it won't work for them. But every time, they step out a few moments later like different women, with a smile on their faces that says, “Well, this is an amazing surprise!”
I continue to be deeply touched by these experiences, because I felt the same way.
I know the unspoken burden that so many of us carry, especially after age 40, as our bodies change and naturally get softer and fuller. Society tells us we are less fashionable and attractive. It’s a primal feeling of rejection. And though we are seasoned enough to have accepted our bodies and transcended our most acute self-esteem issues, we still feel defeated and discouraged when we lose the privilege of being able to looking chic. And since we can't find anything to wear that fits our bodies and looks chic, we don't wear things that look chic. And so we are presumed to be uninterested in looking chic, and so nothing is designed for us to look chic. It's a vicious cycle.
So, when a large-breasted or mature-busted woman sees herself in Embrago for the first time -- looking sleek, beautiful, feminine, and contemporary -- the joy is real.
Can supportive clothing work for you?
2. You will be surprised and delighted at how much better you feel.
I created Embrago pieces to be the change I wanted to see in the full bust clothing world. To offer the support and shaping of a bra without the feel of a bra. To have the feel of wire-free, soft comfort without the elastic-banded shelf bras or squeezy compressive nylon of most wire-free “built in support” tops on the market today.
Our bra drawers are littered with the detritus of marketing ploys and the exploitation of our fondest hopes: unworn sports bras, no-bra bras, wirefree bras, support tanks, sports tops, yoga tops, and more. All of them promised comfort and support, but when we actually wore them, they were not really that comfortable (or not that supportive). They still hurt our shoulders or ribcage, they still poked or constricted or used too-tight hard bands, straps, and metal hardware while leaving us with uniboob. The many ads for bras or tanks that tout size inclusivity and promise they work great “even for bigger busts!" amount to lies, damn lies.
When you have shoulder pain, shoulder grooves, neck-strain headaches, or if you wake up with tingling and numbness in your arms, it's often the result of years of micro-tears and displacements of vital nerve pathways, ligaments, and skeleto-musculature. Yet no one is acknowledging the bra’s role in wreaking this havoc. Even chiropractors blame OUR ‘too big’ breasts for these problems. But women in bra-free cultures don’t have these issues, no matter how large their breasts are. It’s the bras that are creating the problems, not our breasts.
Our bodies know this on a subconscious visceral level. It’s the reason we tear off our bras like wild animals trying to escape as soon as we are alone in our homes. But relishing a few stolen hours of bra-freedom a day isn't enough to undo years of tissue trauma.
Before now, there have been very few options, because with big boobs in this Western society, we can’t go braless and live a normal life, in a practical sense. We still need a way to look acceptably dressed.
Embrago’s bra-free clothing distributes bust weight over a broader area and offsets the pressure points to take weight off the shoulder groove area to provide more support, lift, and shape from the torso. So you never have to wear a bra again, but you can still look like you are wearing one.
Bra-free clothing gives you a new choice, a different option, a way to be well-dressed without a bra so that your neck, shoulders, and back get a chance to rest and heal. It’s an investment in your health and a lifestyle-friendly item of clothing built for the body you have. Once you start wearing Embrago on a regular basis, everything in your upper body, from your neck and shoulders, to your rib cage and chest can relax again. Nerves unpinch, circulation comes back, lymph flows, digestion is unimpeded. You feel so much better in so many ways that you didn’t even realize you could.
3. It improves your mood and frees your mind.
Bra-free clothing frees up all the head space you currently allocate, consciously and unconsciously, to thinking about all the full bust factors that affect getting dressed, and the discomforts you experience all day.
Think about how much time, worry, and self-criticism you have endured over the years, starting around age 12. Think of how, even today, you wouldn’t dream of leaving the house without a bra even though you hate the prison of strapping yourself into one. Have you ever chosen to stay home just so you could avoid putting a bra on again? Or not answered the door because you weren’t wearing a bra? Or spent time in front of your closet negotiating with yourself about how to dress your breasts that day? (“Who am I going to see? Do I need to wear the good bra that squeezes my ribs, gives me acid reflux so I can’t eat, and feels horrible but fits the way it’s supposed to so I look better and not so shapeless? Or do I skip it and just wear the old worn-out one that doesn’t fit right and gives me quad-boob but at least it doesn’t hurt.”)
We are just as constrained mentally and emotionally as we are physically by this process of having to strap down/strap in/lift up the large volume of our breast tissue in order to be considered presentable to the world. We shouldn't have to make these choices and trade offs, and we don't need to any more. Bra-free clothing eliminates so many decisions and discomforts.
As Leah of Hourglassy said in her review of Embrago, after spending a long and active day in the Ultimate Top:
“I didn’t think about my boobs the whole day.”
When was the last time you could say that?
4. It simplifies your life with mindful, minimalist, timeless style that lasts.
You want comfort and practicality—and you want to look good. Right? Especially if you are a caregiver, a traveler, or work full-time.
It’s what everyone wants now, pieces that go from “sleep to street.” Clothes that are comfortable, that let you move, eat, breathe, and sleep. But as usual, most of the options offered are non-starters if you’re large busted: Comfort lingerie? Expect pieces that give you no shaping and still dig into your shoulders and itch (lace bralettes anyone?). Or they give you uniboob or some other odd, artificial, or unflattering silhouette (most wirefree bras and tanks). How about the “underwear as outerwear” trend? Ummmm, no. Not on our bodies.
We need clothing that is soft and supportive, that is comfy and lifts and shapes large breast volume. We need clothing that is designed for the special needs of the full-busted that actually lets us look like women, and not like marshmallows on toothpicks. (No more tunics, please.)
Embrago styles do what we full-busted women have wanted and needed our clothes to do all along: they give us secure support that is also gentle and soft, gently but firmly supporting, giving us beauty and shape, naturally slimming and chic without compressing or squishing. They provide understated, sophisticated femininity that shows off our figures without oversexualizing them.
Embrago's bra-free pieces are so comfortable they can be worn 24/7. They provide versatile basics that can be styled dozens of different ways to suit your life and personal style. Each design does the job of multiple pieces, and can take the place of bra, foundation wear, ready-to-wear styles, and yoga/fitness wear. Embrago is hardest-working piece in your wardrobe. If you’re the kind of woman who values versatility, practicality, AND wants to look good, there’s simply no other piece of clothing out there that can do what Embrago does for the full-busted woman. Bonus: if you believe in conscious consumption and fighting consumerism, it also allows you to buy a lot less.
5. You're supporting positive industry change for other full-busted women.
Wouldn't you like to spare your friends, your daughters, sisters, and younger women from the angst and pain you've been through as a full-busted woman trying to find clothes?
Embrago is not a faceless corporation with deep pockets taking advantage of a history of misogynistic fashion traditions. Embrago is the result of one woman on a mission, believing passionately that we can make a difference and help a lot of women.
This woman believes it’s just a matter of time until the fashion world recognizes the obvious-ness of this need. And she hopes, one day, to make Embrago’s designs available and accessible to every woman who needs them. For now, she’s starting where she can, as a small, woman-owned business trying to operate ethically and fairly and support other small, women-owned ventures.
If you believe in this mission, please join the cause. Give Embrago a try, and spread the word to as many friends as you can. Talk about it, share feedback, help us make it even better. You’ll not only experience a unique, innovative, high-quality product that solves a real problem, you’ll also be supporting a whole village of female entrepreneurs (fabric suppliers, engineers, factory owners, photographers, shop owners, designers, stylists, and aspiring models) who are all trying to build independent lives that offer value to the world and help other women.
I can promise you that Embrago will be unlike any piece of clothing you’ve ever owned. And it just might be, for you, the word that comes up most frequently among our customers:
A gamechanger.
It might change everything you thought you knew about your fashion choices, and every choice you thought you had to make about getting dressed. It might make you look better, feel better, and give you more time, mental freedom, and emotional energy for living.
So try Embrago for yourself or gift it to a full-busted woman you love. Find us and share on social media, subscribe to our email list, or send an email with your thoughts. You'll be making life better for full-busted women now and in the future. Come change the game with us!
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