Cheryl Hudson-Jackson, Shir-lynn Brown, and Sherita Caesar have been friends for years. Hudson-Jackson and Caesar attended IIT together in the early 80s and met Brown later when she worked with Caesar at Motorola. About three years ago, Caesar, who was working in Atlanta at the time, was to receive a Woman of the Year award from the Technology Association of Georgia. Hudson-Jackson and Brown flew in for the ceremony.
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Caesar, it turns out, was a fashion statistic. According to manufacturers, more than 70 percent of women in the U.S. are wearing bras that don’t fit. As they talked about the incident later, the three women agreed that someone needed to bring back the old art of bra fitting. Not a la Victoria’s Secret, “where the girls are walking around with a tape measure around their necks and measuring people over their outerwear,” Hudson-Jackson says. “You won’t get an accurate measurement like that. I mean someone who can look at you and tell you what size bra you need and in what brand, because each brand differs. Someone who can tell you where the support in the bra is, and someone who can help you get your breasts to sit just where you want them to.” As larger women, they’d all experienced difficulty finding undergarments and evening wear. They wanted a lingerie boutique that catered to the hard-to-fit. So they consulted with a few of their friends and drew up a five-year plan to do it themselves, naming their company Rubynesque.
All three women had well-established technical careers. But in addition to working for companies like 3Com, Hudson-Jackson had moonlighted in the lingerie department of Saks Fifth Avenue, just for fun. She’d been interested in lingerie since she was the lone little girl in a family of boys. Her mother and aunts had a passion for fine undergarments, and for her sixth birthday she was initiated into the club with a lacy slip, fishnet stockings, and a girdle. “I remember when shopping on Halsted or at Evergreen Plaza, back in the day, was an experience,” Hudson-Jackson says. “There was a lot of personal attention and time spent with a customer. Everyone got dressed to go shopping, and there was just so much style.”
Fit, of course, is key. Hudson-Jackson recommends a simple test: If your breasts fit in the cup and the bra is comfortable when fastened at the middle hook, your bra fits. If you have to go to the last hook to make the fit comfortable, your bra is too big or its elasticity has worn out; go down one band size–from 36, say, to 34. If you’re using the first hook, go up a size.
