Iris the Bra Lady Knows Better Than Your Instagram Ad
How the death of the mom-and-pop shop has been fueled by our own algorithmic-informed arrogance.
I have a bra lady.
Her name is Iris, she has an eponymous lingerie shop on Atlantic Avenue, and for the past 10 years she, with her Xray vision and prodigious ability to size up a rack, has been outfitting me with beautiful, flattering undergarments. Prior to Iris, I went to a since-retired older woman in Park Slope, and before that, I would schlep out to Boro Park once or twice a year to visit these two aging sisters with a hole-in-the-wall shop on New Utrecht Avenue. All of them mistresses in the dying art of bra-fitting. Indeed, as a self-identified “busty lady,” I had not purchased a bra without the intervention of an expert since high school. Until 2020,
