We’ve been missing a few months, and relying on the Maternity Diaries of Charley’s sister to keep our blog running – life got in the way, sorry! But during this time, I have, of course, acquired more lingerie including an order of 4 of my favourite bras ever from Ewa Michalak. In the lingerie community, Polish bra companies are very well renowned for their larger size ranges, generally good quality and narrower wires. For those less versed in the specifics of bra fitting (and I’m still not an expert!), as cup sizes get larger, especially on smaller band sizes, the grading can go “off” a bit, meaning that wires can become too wide and sit too far back under the arms on many figures. This happens fairly often in UK brands, but fortunately I haven’t yet suffered that problem; I think I have fairly wide breasts (proportionately for the size I think!), but I haven’t delved too far into the “larger” cup sizes where grading becomes an issue yet (usually H+ for most people and brands). Anyway, my point is that Polish companies are usually quite good at dealing with grading and have narrow wires in larger sizes which is what a lot of “Big Cups” are looking for, and many end up turning to them as a last resort. I’ve reviewed a Polish brand, Avocado, in the past and found that another bra of theirs (the Reglisse) was too narrow for me, but the Caprice was about right.

So, I’ve wanted to try Ewa Michalak (EM) for a long time and kept an eye on the bra swaps groups around the internet I frequent (the Reddit one is great for a large range of sizes) – I finally came across someone selling two EMs, both in 65FF: the CHP Famme Fatale and CHP Cappucino. They both fitted me very well to start with (at the time I was closer to a 28FF than the 28G/GG I am now), but were a little close to being too small, which they now are (although I still wear them!). EM is known for giving stunning cleavage, and the CHP (essentially a half cup with 3 upward seams) is the best of those. So I chose 4 bras, 2 CHP styles, 2 S styles (reviews of these to come!), and here’s the first, the CH/CHP Owoce Lesne in 65G (30G – more on this later!).

APPEARANCE & SHAPE

Ewa Michalak uses a unique system to describe the bra styles – this bra is classified as CHP which means a “half cup plunge”, the cups have the half cup shape with a very pushed up effect, but the gore is slightly lower than the simple CH (half cup). Since I already knew I loved the shape of the CHP, which has a much lower and open on top cup edge than most UK brands (and is perfect for my full on top shape), I knew I would like this one too.

It’s hard to get across the colours of this bra on a screen, but it’s described on their site as being raspberry pink and noble navy blue – the pink is fairly bright, and quite close to a red too. The navy detailing really is the finishing touch on this bra, with lace along the top of the cup and piping on the underwire and seams. The bows to be honest aren’t strictly necessary and are a little over the top – I’ve never got the fascination with almost every bra having bows on it, but at least Ewa Michalak’s are different as they’re bigger and more obvious.

True to all EM half cups, it does give a pretty awesome cleavage. It has light padding as the cups themselves (which I generally tend to prefer), and also comes with what they call “asymmetry pads”, but these are definitely not necessary to get cleavage – it’s all in the clever seaming! I don’t use the asymmetry pads in this bra at all because I don’t really need more cleavage, but I’ve kept them in case they’re ever necessary!

The straps are fully adjustable, which is always handy, as you find some cheaper brands often only adjust half way and are too long for some figures.

SIZING, FIT AND COMFORT

Since my old Ewa Michalak bras were a 65FF and slightly too small, I decided to go up a cup size in these. Strangely, the bands on those two felt quite a bit bigger, even when I first tried them on; you can never know whether you’ll get a tight or loose band! So this is a 65G – strictly speaking, that’s the equivalent of a UK 30G, but in reality it’s closer to most UK brands’ 28G/GGs. I’d say the band is not far off being a true 28 (I close it on the loosest hooks still) and the cup is half way between a G and GG on a 28 band. Hooks-wise, it has 3 sets of 2 hooks, with a fairly narrow band. I would recommend if you usually wear a 28 band in most UK brands to try a 65 band from Ewa Michalak first, since 60 bands (technically a 28) are made to order and cannot be refunded or exchanged, and a 65 fits me like most 28 bands do anyway.

As you can see in the picture above though, the bra isn’t actually a perfect fit for me, despite looking so from the front. The wires are actually slightly too narrow for me – maybe only the trained eye can tell (as Ben says, I spend a lot of time looking at boobs – all in the name of research for this blog!), but the wire is sitting ever so slightly on breast tissue at the side. Granted, I did show you my bigger side to make this more apparent. It isn’t uncomfortable at all for me though, and I think I could get away with going up a cup size to the 65GG to solve the issue, since I’m bordering on the barrier of G/GG anyway.

One thing to bear in mind though is to try the calculator provided at Ewa Michalak but don’t rely on it – it brings me out as a 65F/FF, whereas the 65FF is now really on the small side and barely wearable. It depends on the person, so it may work perfectly for you, but I would recommend checking out reviews on Bratabase of the particular bra or style you intend to buy and comparing measurements to your current bras or checking out what styles people in your size range wear to find someone similar in size to you.

So, the CHP Owoce Lesne is available to buy at Ewa Michalak’s website for 139zl (around £26). The ready to wear sizing runs from 65-85 (30-38) A-GG, and the bra can be ordered in sizes outside this range (55C-G, 60B-FF, 70-80AA, 85AA-C, 90A-FF, 95A-F) for an extra 20zl (about £3.75 – not bad really!). The smaller sizes of this bra are actually made from the CH cut due to requests from customers.

Have you tried any Ewa Michalak bras? I have heard reports that the customer service is not fantastic (much of this is old and related to “strapgate” though – look it up if you don’t know, I won’t go into it!), but apart from the email contact being fairly abrupt (which may be down to the language barrier), I’ve had no issues whatsoever. The shipping wasn’t too bad – I did have to wait a while because one of the bras was not yet made, but once they were shipped, they arrived from Poland (to the UK) within a few days. There unfortunately isn’t the option to track them properly on their journey, which did cause me a bit of anxiety, just because I like to see where my packages are, but since they arrived well packaged and timely, it wasn’t an issue.