Oh, Ophelia!
This is a quick mention about the Ophelia – unfortunately, the style was not a great fit for me but there are so many great things about this bra I do want to mention it.
Elomi offers quite a few moulded and smooth cup bras, but the Ophelia intruiged me because of the push-up design. Yes, gentle readers, the Ophelia is a moulded plunge push-up bra.
Band: Extremely comfortable. I tried a 34 and 36 – the 36 was the right fit.
Gore: Tacked beautifully, and was blissfully short.
Cups: First, the darts you see on the cups are in the leopard-pattern fabric, they do not offer support. I tried FF and G cups since HerRoom advised this bra runs small in the cups (with all that padding…). The FF was the better fit; however, like most moulded bras the Ophelia just sort of swam around on my chest. The Ophelia is a STIFF cupped moulded bra. The extra cup size needed to install the push-up padding unfortunately made the cups too wide…so the cups were like wide saucers swimming on my chest. A bit of width probably wouldn’t be an issue for most, but since I’m so wide….well, it wasn’t attractive. The width also got under my armpits a bit, which would have been irritating.
Conclusion: The Ophelia is a sophisticated, sexy bra. I almost cried when it didn’t work. If you like the idea of a push-up bra and are larger than a C cup, definitely give Ophelia a try. This bra is a great choice for close set/touching breasts since it is a plunge. The Ophelia may work for short-waisted and high set ladies – I had difficulty separating the width and stiffness of the cups from the overall fit of the bra.
I wonder if there’s an analogue in lower band sizes?
There are three 32 bands in the lower large cup range. Parisa Fe has a few styles called push-up: Body Veil PT1042 and Florence 1037. Chantelle has the Sexy Push Up 3646.
I haven’t noticed the equivalent in Freya or Panache or Cleo.
I missed this review earlier! The Ophelia is based on their smoothing bra (1221) which they discontinued. It’s sad because it’s hard to find push-up bras or plunges in 36+ band sizes and F+ cup sizes, but they could never garner enough support for the style. I think the culprit is the stiffer cups you mentioned. The regular 1220 t-shirt bra uses the same fabric, and it’s abysmal if your shape doesn’t exactly match the bra’s shape. If they could use something softer and more flexible, I think this style would be perfect for the line!