This may sound like a really bad idea: Take a selfie of your breasts and send it in to a little-known company. They'll send you the perfect bra - they promise.
That's the pitch behind a new iOS app called ThirdLove, which promises the least annoying bra shopping experience you've ever had. And yes, it requires you to take two selfie photos of your chest. ThirdLove, according to Tech Crunch, is just out of beta - backed by MeCommerce - and ready for you to download and try on your iPhone (sorry, no Android app for now, but it's coming soon).
To be fair, ThirdLove doesn't require bare photos - just wear a form-fitting tank top for two photos amounting to what the company calls its "virtual measuring tape." The idea is actually quite ingenious. According to the company (as well as several independent studies, as well as Oprah!) at least 80 percent of women are wearing the wrong bra sizes.
Partly, that's because traditional bra sizes don't work for everyone - and partly because underwear shopping of such a specific, individualized nature is not something a lot of people want to spend time doing. Besides using selfies to get an accurate picture of the objective, ThirdLove offers bras in what it calls "half-sizes that traditional brands have missed." They've even found that up to 60 percent of women actually fall into those half-sizes, instead of the A, B, C, and D system most often used.
Once sized by the app, the ThirdLove app lets you shop a "curated collection" on your iPhone, including lots of different styles, looks, colors, and strap options.
ThirdLove certainly isn't the first custom bra company. But on the technical side, there are some reasons ThirdLove is different than other stores and apps. Computer vision scientists using image recognition technology developed its sizing system, for one. The second reason is that the company designs and manufactures its own bras in a vertically integrated company, and those bras are sized based on its own unique system, which in turn is based on the image recognition app.
You can check out ThirdLove's homepage here, and download the app for iOS here.
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