Longline Giving Me a Hard Time - Freya Pandora Review in 28G

I adore how this bra looks, on the stock photos, and, to an extent, irl. It looks pretty basic from the front but it has some stunning design features that I will delve into later. However, in true Freya fashion, this bra only goes up to a 28G so it really doesn't fit me, which makes me sad.

Onto the review...

Design:

This bra works pretty well. At first you may just think it's any old embroidered black bra, but it's so much more than that.

The colours on the embroidery really jump out, they're so bright and intense! I couldn't quite catch that on camera, but take my word for it. The "stems" are plain black, so the rest of the bra doesn't look boring.

The strap embellishments are gold and black chevron-y things, they look super unique. Again, the colour didn't show up. They really are very gold. The gore trinket is a weird greyish blue though, it doesn't really go with the blue thread in my opinion.

The trim on the top of the cups and bottom of the band is just sublime. It reminds me a bit of a gardening trellis, which works well with the floral theme.

DOTS. I love these tiny dots in the mesh!

Construction:

This longline features a three part, semi-plunging (but not really) cup. I assume the gore is lower in smaller cup sizes. Sadly the longline isn't super long, coming about an inch below the bottom of the cup. I would struggle to wear a super long longline due to my high waistedness and IBS but I really would prefer more length than this. It's not boned at all, so may bunch or roll up on people - it did on me!

I'm also not really feeling the proportions of this bra. The mesh upper cup is just a bit too large in comparison to the bottom.

Unfortunately the straps are just plain black elastic (and quite wide too, a Freya standard).

And although the dotted mesh lines the cradle (the area surrounding the cups to the side seam), the back is plain black mesh. That isn't my biggest grievance, though...

4X2 HOOKS? What is this madness? I like my regular bras to have 3x3 hooks, so 4 rows is basically still a regular bra, and cutting the columns down to two just makes no sense to me. ugh.

Fit:

Bleh. It's obviously too small in the cups, but the quadboob slowly disappears as the whole bra shifts downwards.

It shifts down immediately and quite far, despite how the longlininess of it should make it more stable - I think this is caused by a combination of my boobs escaping the cups, and how it's just not got a great deal of room at the wire.

The bra has a rounded profile but it's a downwards rounded shape, that I'm really not fond of. I think in a better volume it would look more uplifted, but this bra is never going to have the silhouette of, say, a Polish half cup.

The wires are very wide, and how soft they are just exacerbates that as the band pulls them even wider.

The bra is fairly tall but allows for an even vertical fullness level, and doesn't have a huge amount of room for inner fullness.

As you can see, that gore is almost tacking but there is a lot of spillage.

The band is on the snug side but because of the ridiculous decision to only put two columns of hooks on the bra it's too loose for me on the tightest hooks.

I think the main problem with this bra is that it's just not scaled that well... the largest cup size sold in this bra is a G, and it shows. From the odd proportions to the tall and wide cups, it just seems like this size didn't have that much care put into it.

Bratabase Measurements:

Overall:

I wish this bra came in a 28GG so I could fudge the fit I like the flowers and the dots enough that I would probably deal with a too shallow bra for it. This bra would suit those with tallish but even, wide rooted, slightly shallow shapes who require a bit of depth at the bottom of the cups and at the wire, but not too much.

Have you tried a Freya plunge longline? How did it work out for you?