Births are up, and business is brisk at the Orchard Corset, the Lower East Side shop that has been lifting and separating New York women since 1926. One morning not long ago, the line inside was five deep with pregnant ladies, nursing moms, and other full-figured women in need of frontal minimizing, which is the shop's specialty.

Standing at the head of the queue was Ralph Berk, a middle-aged Orthodox Jew who runs the store with his mother. Since he was an infant, Berk has spent many of his days in the cramped shop, surrounded by teetering stacks of women's smalls. A hefty man with tangled tzitzis and arms that explode from his sleeves, he manages the shop with minimal fuss. The first customer in the line was a Latin teen-ager, who was falling out of her bra.

"Look there," he said, taking two fingers and pointing to the sides of her bosom. "You're popping."

The girl resisted. "I am a 34-C," she said.

Berk shook his head, spun her around, and inspected her back. "Look at these folds. You are a 36-D," he said, handing her a bra. "Take it."

She muttered in Spanish. Berk muttered right back. "Do not be a baby," he said, in slow but accurate Spanish. "Go see Mommy."

The girl disappeared behind a curtain that divides the shop and acts as a dressing room, and Berk's mother hoisted her into her new brassiere. Berk peeked over the curtain.

"There, see," he said. "I have the eye."

Berk believes it is "the eye" that enables him to assess in a matter of seconds the exact measurement and taste of each customer. Clients walk in, are optically sized up, and then are handed what he supposes they desire. There are no display racks. Berk is the one who decides whether a woman is a Satin Fantasy or a Nobody's Perfect.

"Next!"

A new mom needed a nursing bra.

"How old's the baby?"

"Seven months."

Berk bit his bottom lip, then toddled off. He returned with the latest in nursing engineering. He stuck his hands in the cups and opened the feeding flap with his thumb and forefinger.

"See? No snaps. Only slit. Easy. See?"

The new mom beamed.

"Go try," Berk said, still working the flap like a puppet.

Next up was a woman in her sixth month of pregnancy. "I've never worn a bra," she confessed.

Berk looked alarmed. "Let me look," he said. She tugged down her shirt to reveal a cotton camisole. He gasped.

"That is nothing!" he shouted. He rushed to the shelves and began tearing down boxes. He selected two 36-Bs.

"You like sexy?" he asked. The mother-to-be shrugged.

"I give panties to try, too. No maternity. Thongs."

He pulled the first bra on over the woman's shirt and snapped the back.

"Here, you try," he said, handing her the underpants—red lace, with elastic up the back. She reluctantly joggled them up over her trousers. The fabric scrunched like a fan.

"Sexy, yes?" he asked.

"I guess," she said.

"It is the bra Oprah wears. Very good. Half price."

He paused, trained his X-ray beams on her belly.

"A boy," he said confidently.

"Really?" she asked, her eyes wide. "Are you sure?"

"Eight pounds."