and the Ritzy:
Cleo also produced a babydoll version of their Marcie bra:
The fourth option is Parfait's Alexis babydoll, which I have not yet tried:
Curvy Kate's Lola was the first to make it to my home. The structure of the cups is a padded version of their normal balconette shape, which makes it the same as the Daily Boost. Now, I knew I was taking a bit of a risk here. Curvy Kate's balconettes tend to fit me well but not give me a great shape. However, since the shape usually looks decent at first and slowly degrades throughout the day, I thought I would be totally fine with a nightwear item, which just needs to look half-decent on its own--no issues with the look under clothing. However, I thought wrong:
WAUGH! UGH! CURVY KATE WHY!!!!
In any case, my natural first thought was to perform the alteration described in my post "How To Make a Pointy Bra Round." To my consternation, the alteration DID NOT HELP. These cups remained stubbornly just as pointy as ever. Shortening/lengthening the straps also made no difference.
This was a tragic turn of events because the Lola babydoll is so perfect in every other way. The body is made of a soft, high-quality mesh and the hem is finished with a gorgeous wide stretch satin trim. Because it came so close to being wonderful (and yet so, so far) I decided to keep it, wear it to bed, and just avoid ever standing in direct profile in the vicinity of my boyfriend or a mirror.
For sizing reference, I got the Lola babydoll in a 32H. The cups and band run the same as other Curvy Kate balconettes. My hip measurement is about 2 inches smaller than my bust measurement, and I found that with the notch in the babydoll section where the band meets, I am able to step into it and pull it up over my hips with no difficulty. Judging from other reviews, if your hip measurement is larger than your bust, you will need to shimmy it on over your head.
Following my disappointment with the Lola babydoll, I decided to have another try with the Ritzy babydoll. This cup structure, being a half-cup, is innately much more full-on-top friendly, so I had no worries that it would work perfectly for me in the same size I'd tried in the Lola (32H). Behold:
The Ritzy is a regular old half-cup style with two vertical seams. I originally thought that Curvy Kate had experimented with a single-verticle-seam half-cup structure similar to Tutti Rouge's Betty, because you can only see one vertical seam on the cup overlay. However, the inside of the cup reveals there are two seams. This means the cup shape is the same as Curvy Kate's Tease Me and Thrill Me styles. The one difference is that the Ritzy runs larger in the cups than the later iterations of Tease Me and Thrill Me (which got smaller as the seasons went along). I only *just* squeeze into the Thrill Me in a 32H, but I get slight gapping in the Ritzy in 32H when lying down. Ladies with less upper fullness can possibly fit into a size smaller in the Ritzy than they would need in the Thrill Me and Tease Me. The band is also tighter on the Ritzy babydoll. I know some people felt that the Showgirl bands were a little too loose, so this will be good news for them.
The body section of the Ritzy babydoll was at first less to my taste than the Lola's body section. The body section is more clingy, almost as though it was static-y. It also lacks the satin trim of the Lola and is much less substantial-feeling. I prefer the Lola's body section, but I feel that Curvy Kate may have made the Ritzy's body section in this way to deal with the worries some women have about having their body swamped in a babydoll. It's a fairly classic full-bust dilemma to wish you could cut apart the sections of various items to create one that is perfect. Failing that, the Ritzy is the stronger option for now. And it will be coming out in red for Autumn/Winter '14:
Of course, I still prefer the Lola colorway for AW14:
However, since the number of babydolls available has increased vastly from the previous zero, I'm not going to grumble too much.
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