Jenice Armstrong: The right cup: 'Bra Whisperer' aims to put women into bras that fit

YOU PROBABLY wear the wrong size bra.

Most women do.

Who knew? Before Oprah Winfrey began her "bra intervention" episodes, most of us assumed we were just fine.

But if the extent of your bra shopping is tossing a three-pack of Maidenforms into a shopping cart at Costco, you can't be expected to get it right. Especially when you factor in how bodies change with childbirth, weight loss and menopause.

I'd never thought much about women's breasts and the issues of holding them in place until I casually mentioned plans to drive out to King of Prussia to talk with the so-called "Bra Whisperer." That's when bra horror stories came spilling out from even the small-chested women. They complained of too-tight bras that they snatch off the instant they arrive home, and of never being able to find one that was truly comfortable. One well-endowed buddy complained of having to resort to industrial-strength numbers when what she really yearns for is something sexy. No one was happy, which makes no sense since American women spent $5.7 billion on more than 425 million bras last year, according to market research from The NPD Group.

Susan Nethero, who was dubbed the Bra Whisperer by Carson Kressley, of Lifetime's "How to Look Good Naked," estimates that 80 percent of American women are wearing the wrong size bra. You'd think women are underestimating their sizes. Nah-uh. Most women wear their bras way too loose. "We associate looseness with comfort," Nethero explained. Warning: Get too close to Nethero during a fitting and she may grab onto the elastic in the back of your bra to demonstrate just how ill-fitting it is.

Intimacy, the new lingerie store at the King of Prussia Mall, is a touchy-feely kind of place. It may take some getting used to if the level of customer service you're more accustomed to consists of a bored salesperson shrugging and telling you, "All we have is what's out."

Fittings at Intimacy are "high touch." In other words, you won't be alone in the dressing room when you're trying on bras.

Employees attend weeklong bra boot camps and presumably get desensitized to the point that they aren't shy about asking topless female customers to bend over at the waist to demonstrate the correct way to put a bra on.

Tape measures are blasphemous at Intimacy. Sizing is done by eye as well as trial and error. Nethero, who decided to go into the bra business in 1992 after her husband's job transferred him to Atlanta, calls her unorthodox method of fitting brassieres as "holistic." Personalized bra fittings take 20 to 30 minutes. Reservations are preferred at Intimacy but walk-ins are also welcome.

This may sound like much ado about mammaries until you see the difference that Intimacy's magic can make. Splayed breasts that need corralling to create cleavage? Not a problem. Breasts that sag? Or bras that seesaw with the back creeping up and the front down? Not an issue at Intimacy, either.

This place is a candy store for décolletage and stocked with sizes from A to K cups in primarily European brands, which Nethero prefers since, she said, they have more components and take longer to make than American brands.

Nethero went big time in 2005 when doing some before-and-after bra fittings for O magazine, where she impressed fashion editor Andrew Glassman. "He said, 'Oh, my God. You're changing people's lives,' and he went and got Gayle King," Nethero recalled.

Nethero immediately saw that King had on an ill-fitting bra. She coaxed her out of a 36C and into a 32E. "Two weeks later, we were on [the 'Oprah Winfrey Show'] doing it."

Intimacy, which opened yesterday and is located on the second level next to Nordstrom's, is the 12th store in the chain. But last week, during its soft opening, loyal customers were already there. Nethero calls these ladies "breast aware" - something more women need to be, she said.

To hear her tell it, if we adhere to her gospel, our cups may not runneth over but we'll be properly uplifted.

I think I'm hooked.