I feel like a broken record right now as I keep explaining that I’m catching up on some pre-bump reviews, but I’m back with another! These photos were taken at the same time as my Gossard Superboost Bralette review, hence the fact it’s taken me so long to get round to them – like I said in that post, I wasn’t happy with the photos (turns out it was probably pregnancy-brain before I even knew I was pregnant!), then I got pretty poorly with first trimester for a little while. The quality of these photos is pretty terrible (I’m sorry!) but I haven’t been able to redo them since due to my growing size, but this set is now down to just £11 for the bra and £4.50 for the briefs, which I think is an excellent price for a good set like this, so I’m going to share this post before it’s too late!
The Gossard Carmen bra (currently £11) and briefs (£4.50) were provided by the brand for review.
Shape & Appearance
The Gossard Carmen set works perfectly for the trend of tattoo effect lingerie I talked about last year with its beige main fabric that almost works as a nude against my pale skin tone and the intricate embroidery set onto a mesh over the cups and on the centre of the briefs. This light and delicate stencilled floral stitching results in a barely-there illusion effect where the lingerie almost appears tattooed onto the skin, outlined by bold black lines with the wire casing, straps and band.
In contrast though, the bra is actually very well structured with moulded cups and sturdy underwires. While the exterior of the bra appears to show either vertical seams or darts, the interior is in fact a complete moulded cup with no seaming – the mesh fabric overlay is seamed in order to lay flat over these.
The bra is a low plunge style, actually really quite low for a DD+ style – the gore is relatively narrow, and the style is essentially bandless at the front. It fastens at the back with 3 sets of 2 rows of hooks, and the straps are fully adjustable.
Size, Fit & Comfort
I chose to go with the 30G in the Gossard Carmen bra – my usual Gossard size – and this fits me well. Despite being a sister size to my best-fitting size at the time (28GG), the band does in fact feel tight enough for my liking – and I prefer tight bands usually. This suggests to me that the band fits slightly on the smaller side. The cups fit smoothly against my breast tissue
Moulded cups can be tricky to fit on a variety of shaped breasts – for my evenly rounded and full on top shape, the bra fits pretty well. The cups have little flexibility, so I’d imagine if you have a softer or very projected shape, especially if you require a lot of projection at the bottom of the cup, you’d struggle with this. I do need a moderate amount of projection, but due to the open top edge of the cup, I find that it simply provides a pretty good push up effect with a fair amount of cleavage for me.
I’ve spoken before about how Gossard’s designs aren’t necessarily made for a full bust due to their wires being quite wide and their cups not designed specifically for a larger size. This bra is very much the same – the wires sit quite far outside the edge of my breast tissue under my arms. But nevertheless, like always with Gossard bras, I’m very pleased to have the opportunity to wear a bra that goes up to a G cup but still retains the look of a smaller cup bra – something that’s tricky to find!
I chose the briefs in a size medium and find them really comfortable – if only all matching set briefs could be this comfortable! They’re a proper bikini style that doesn’t have the “wedgie effect” with a smooth yet stretchy solid black panel of fabric in the back and mesh with embroidery matching the bra in the front. Honestly, I wear these all the time, even without the bra!
