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Meet the Merchants Personal Style

Decoding Comfort: Expert Jeni Doherty on Everything You Need to Know About Sleepwear vs Loungewear

jeni_torsoOn crisp fall days, we’re all about two things: pumpkin spice lattes and the comfiest, coziest clothes we can get our hands on.

“Everyone is working longer hours, and we’re staying in work clothes for more than half the day before going to bed late,” says Jeni Doherty, sleepwear and loungewear expert here at Bare Necessities. “All you want to do is walk through your front door is change into something super-comfortable,” she says. Amen to that.

Read on to meet Jeni and see what options she suggests to reach maximum relaxation.

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Behind the Seams Bra Fit Experts

New Mom Laura Burke on How to Choose a Nursing Bra

Say hello to Laura Burke, Director of Customer Service, Bra Fit Expert and mom to a 4-year-old son and a 7-month-old daughter. To say she’s a woman in demand, at work and at home, would be a serious understatement. We wanted to find out everything she knows professionally and personally about nursing bras (one thing new moms don’t have all that much of is free time to do research), not to mention how she holds it all together when life’s going a hundred miles a minute in every direction.

Give her, or any of our certified Bra Fit Experts, a ring at 877-728-9272 or tweet questions to @barenecessities with the hashtag #getalift. They’re at your service.

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Breast Cancer Awareness Health & Wellness

“The Doctor Will See You Now, Doctor”: A Breast Cancer Survival Story

In the final installment of our special four-part series on breast cancer, Dr. Sharon Mass opens up about her very personal battle:

When I was a child, my parents called me “Sunshine.” They joked about how I was an eternal optimist, always seeing the proverbial glass half-full. That optimism was tested when, at 43, I was diagnosed with breast cancer by a routine mammogram. As an OB-GYN, I had given cancer news to many patients. However, on a Friday in May 2011—Friday the 13th to be exact—I found myself on the other side of the phone.

Four-and-a-half years later, with pink ribbons fluttering in every storefront, pink shoes on the feet of NFL players and ‘turn-it-pink’ activities at my kids’ high school, I can’t help but relive the moments that had such a lasting impact on my life. In doing so, I can reflect on the impact that those four words—“You have breast cancer”—have had on me and those around me….

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Breast Cancer Awareness Health & Wellness

Breast Cancer Awareness: Pink is the New Black

Last week in our breast health special report, we discovered the Angelina effect. This week, we’re looking at the link between the breast cancer awareness movement’s ubiquitous pink ribbon and better outcomes for women worldwide. “That piece of fabric has evolved into the international symbol of a disease that touches millions, with almost as many meanings and implications,” says Dr. Sharon Mass, OBGYN and our exclusive medical correspondent. In a little over two decades, “it has galvanized communities, raised awareness and tremendous sums of money for research, and spurred more women to get life-saving mammograms,” she says.

Right this moment, in the interest of beating breast cancer, you can buy everything from bras (Wacoal has guaranteed a combined minimum donation of $250,000 to the Susan G. Komen Foundation this year) to blush, yogurt to office supplies. We couldn’t help but wonder where this mega-movement started. So, along with Dr. Mass, we went straight to the source: The Estée Lauder Companies.

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Breast Cancer Awareness Health & Wellness

The Angelina Effect: Genetic Testing for Breast Cancer

We know the power of breast cancer screenings like 3D mammography. Genetic testing for breast cancer is another tool in the fight. When megastar and humanitarian activist Angelina Jolie Pitt spoke out in 2013 about testing positive for the BRCA1 gene, making her very likely to develop breast and/or ovarian cancer, she made waves worldwide by publicly sharing her decision to undergo a prophylactic mastectomy.

“Her honesty and advocacy have made a real difference for women,” says Dr. Sharon Mass, OBGYN and our special medical correspondent. “Because she’s well-known and respected, when she started talking about genetic screening and the surgery, it became mainstream, not this hush-hush, scary thing. Thanks to her, women started talking about it with their own physicians,” Dr. Mass says. In fact, a new study showed that one-fifth of the participants said Angelina’s case made them “deal more intensively with the topic of breast cancer.”

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Breast Cancer Awareness Health & Wellness

You Are Now Entering the Third Dimension: 3D Mammography

Welcome to our special month-long series in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, featuring Dr. Sharon Mass, our exclusive medical correspondent. She’s an OBGYN as well as a survivor. Stop back each week as we zero in on a different facet of the disease including genetic testing, the legacy of the pink ribbon and Dr. Mass’ own story. We’re starting with an overview of the disease and the latest advance in mammography.

Every day, our Bra Fit Experts field calls from breast cancer survivors. Breasts, bras, femininity and identity are all inextricably, powerfully linked:
• A woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every two minutes in America
• It’s the most common cancer in women worldwide
• It’s the second leading cause of cancer death in women
• 27% of all new cancer cases in women will be breast cancer
• In the U.S. alone, there are almost 3 million breast cancer survivors

Mammography is the only screening test that’s been shown to decrease the risk of dying from breast cancer. We sat down for a Q&A with Dr. Mass on this newest innovation in breast cancer detection.

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Behind the Seams Personal Style

Fashion Month Style Inspiration: There’s Something About Shaneek

Our mission here at Bare Necessities is to lift women up so they can soar, which is why we’re featuring the women of this company (stay tuned for the men!) who come to work with a singular goal in mind: to empower you. You just met Mette; next up, introducing Shaneek Anderson, our marketing project coordinator.

NY Fashion Week may be a wrap but, around here, it’s always Fashaneek Week. Every morning, the office waits to see which Shaneek will show up: on Monday, she may be all business in a pencil skirt and tie-neck blouse; on Tuesday, it’s artfully mixed stripes and florals; Wednesday could be glam worthy of the red carpet; Thursday, she may be easygoing in a boho look; by Friday, she’s relaxed in head-to-toe denim. Clothes aside, what she’s really doing is telegraphing different aspects of her personality. That’s charisma: You want to find out more.

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Behind the Seams Bra Fit Experts

Mette Iacovou has expert bra advice, style advice, and more!

Meet Mette Iacovou, one of the certified Bra Fit Experts here to help fit you and find the perfect bras for your body. They field hundreds of calls and chats every day from real women with the same real-world concern: not nearly enough time to find just the right underthings. So do yourself a solid and say hello at 877-728-9272, x4, or tweet @barenecessities with the hashtag #getalift. There’s no problem these bra-fit ninjas can’t solve, pinkie-promise.

Mette Iacovou, customer service supervisor (and employee of the month!)
Bra size: 36H
Life’s work: I always wanted a job where I could help people, inside and out. I was born with a rare tumor—I wasn’t supposed to be here. From infancy until age 17, I had so many surgeries. My attitude wasn’t always positive, but with age comes wisdom. It’s made me more empathetic. So I love nothing more than bringing out someone’s best characteristics and letting her shine.
Role model: After everything I went through, I was very “woe is me, I’m not worthy.” My strong mother taught me otherwise. She showed me what I should and should not be accepting of in life.
Motivation source: My son, daughter—she’s 6 going on 35—and husband. They are fun, loving, caring, genuinely good people.
Passionate about: Educating women to find the right fit in intimate apparel. It’s neat to enlighten friends and strangers, to make them feel more supported. They might take this information and teach it to their own children. It helps raise a woman’s self-esteem.
Bra-fit secret: It takes a lot of tries to get it right, and it’s not just a one-time measurement that stays with you for life, either. It helps if you know what each part of a bra does and how it’s supposed to look on your body. For example, straps are not supposed to be doing all the work!
Fun fact: I was born in Denmark and moved to the States at 7, not knowing one word of English.
Personal mantra: Go for it 100,000%.

The most frequently asked questions Mette has been fielding lately are….

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Personal Style

How to Wear Leggings as Pants (and Where You Can Get Away With It)

The great debates of our time rage on: When will women earn as much as men for the same work? Will there ever be peace in the Middle East? Are leggings really pants?

We may not have answers to the former but to that last burning question, Erica Luster, one of our hosiery experts here at Bare Necessities, says a resounding…

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Behind the Seams Meet the Merchants

What our Lingerie and Bra Experts Really Wear

Here at Bare Necessities, we pride ourselves on the best selection and size range of intimate apparel anywhere, period, end of story. So when you’ve got a near-infinite inventory, a little expert guidance steering you toward what you want and need goes a long way. Read on to find out what our ace team of merchants, bra experts and buyers not only curates for the site but genuinely loves to wear, right down to their all-time favorite bras.

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Personal Style

How to Pack a Suitcase

Packing a suitcase intelligently is the top priority for an effortless getaway—it’s hard to dash for a connecting flight or climb five flights of stairs to a hotel room with a view when you’re schlepping a suitcase the size of a double-decker bus. And there’s something crazy satisfying about zipping past the bored horde at the baggage carousel.

So when we came across a formula for the best way to pack a suitcase to max out wardrobe options and space, we were all in. Not only do we love a system for doing anything better, it applies to a trip of any length of time. (If you’re taking a vacation of longer than a week, you may have to do laundry. No big thing. With Shout wipes, you may get away with a few more days yet.) Limits are surprisingly liberating—there’s a reason fashion editors only wear black—and sticking to them for a few days is easier than you might think.

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Health & Wellness Inner Beauty

How Do Lingerie Models Stay in Shape?

The bra and panty models we work with at Bare Necessities are real women, with good heads on their gorgeous shoulders—that’s why we adore them. We wanted to find out more about their refreshingly realistic fitness and health routines, so we sat down this week for a chat with Jessica Rafalowski (left) and Alissa Jo Caputo (right).

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