The Most Repeated Bra Fitting Advice Is Only Right Half the Time

We’ve all been there at a traffic light. Your GPS insists you turn right, but you can see with your own eyes that turning left is clearly faster. The app is optimized for someone else’s agenda—maybe a sponsored route, maybe outdated data. But your local knowledge, your experience, tells you something different.

This is exactly what happens with the most repeated piece of bra fitting advice in the industry: “Always hook your new bra on the loosest setting.”

It sounds logical. It’s been repeated so many times it feels like gospel. And like that GPS route, there’s a reason it became the standard advice, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right for you.

Where This Rule Came From

The loosest hook advice assumes three things:

1. All bras stretch uniformly over time

2. All elastic materials behave identically

3. Bodies change in predictable, measurable increments

In a perfect world with standardized manufacturing and static bodies, this would work beautifully. Hook on the loosest, wear the bra for months, tighten as it stretches, replace when you reach the tightest hooks. Simple. Mechanical. Efficient.

But bras aren’t theoretical. They’re engineered garments made from different materials, with different construction methods, serving different bodies that shift with weight fluctuations, hormonal changes, time of day, and even the season.

When Your Eyes Know Better Than the Rule

Here’s what three generations of fitting experience has taught us: the right hook is the one that gives you the right fit today.

Sometimes that’s the loosest hook. Sometimes it’s the middle. And yes, sometimes it’s even the tightest hook—especially with:

∙ Bras with particularly firm elastic that hasn’t relaxed yet

∙ Stretch lace bands that behave differently than power net

∙ Bodies that tend to lose rather than gain weight

∙ Seasonal sizing shifts (many women need different band tensions in summer vs. winter)

∙ Immediate post-surgery or post-pregnancy periods when bodies are in flux

If you hook a bra on the loosest setting when the middle hook gives you optimal support and comfort, you’re starting with a band that’s too loose. The bra isn’t supporting properly. The wires aren’t staying in your IMF. The straps are doing work the band should handle. You’re already compensating—tightening straps, adjusting constantly.

And here’s the thing: a too-loose band doesn’t magically become right over time. It just becomes more wrong.

The Better Way: Fit First, Hooks Second

Professional bra fitters don’t start with a hook setting rule. They start with these questions:

∙ Is the band level and secure against your body?

∙ Are the wires sitting in your inframammary fold without shifting?

∙ Can you move comfortably without the band riding up?

∙ Are your straps providing support without bearing excessive weight?

The hook that achieves this is your starting hook. Period.

If that means you’re on the middle or even tightest hooks from day one, you’ve still got room to adjust as your body changes or as seasonal fluctuations affect how your bras feel. And if the bra doesn’t fit correctly on any hook setting? That’s not a hook problem—that’s a size or style problem.

Trust Experience Over Algorithm

Just like that traffic light where you can see the better route, experienced fitters can see what a body needs in that moment. We’re not bound by rules that were created for theoretical average bodies wearing theoretical average bras.

At Elila, we’ve been fitting plus-size bodies for three generations using American sizing methodology. We know that a size 44G body in July might need different band tension than the same body in January. We know that our engineered construction in certain styles maintains elasticity differently than stretch lace alternatives. We know that real fitting requires responding to the actual body in front of us, not following a routing algorithm optimized for someone else’s journey.

The Bottom Line

The loosest hook rule isn’t wrong because it’s malicious—it’s wrong because it’s oversimplified. It treats all bras, all materials, and all bodies as identical variables in an equation.

But you’re not a variable. Your body is unique, dynamic, and deserving of a fit that works for you, not for a theoretical average.

So next time someone tells you that you must start on the loosest hooks, remember that traffic light. Sometimes the fastest route home is the one only you can see.

Trust the fit, not the formula.