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cupholder comments on Financial incentives don't get rid of bias? Prize for best answer. - Less Wrong
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What I want to know is why no one sells half-bras. There's a market: most women are at least somewhat asymmetrical, plenty by enough to warrant different cup sizes. It wouldn't be revolutionary bra technology: it would just have to fasten in the front and the back both and be packaged individually. And it wouldn't take up much extra store space to stock the same range of sizes. I looked once, and there's a patent on it, but no one seems to actually manufacture the things.
There's an even more compelling market: women who have had a single mastectomy. I'd be surprised if there weren't medical half-bras out there already for them.
It wouldn't surprise me. It's cosmetically expected that asymmetries like that be corrected for the visual benefit of others (and for the purpose of making clothes fit) with fills or some other sort of padding. That's also the suggestion I've tended to get when I've expressed a wish for half-bras.
You're right, I should've thought of that. I expect it's easier (maybe therefore cheaper?) to manufacture little silicone blobs or whatever than a half-bra, which must partly be why there's a market for the first and not the second.
It wouldn't be hard to manufacture a half-bra. They already have bras that clasp in front and ones that clasp in the back; there is no obvious structural reason why they couldn't make one that does both and then sell the parts separately. In fact, based on the sorts of bras that already exist, it wouldn't be that hard to have a bunch of bins of detached bra parts that could be assembled in any fashion desired. There are bras with detachable straps, too, so there's clearly no structural reason they have to be permanently affixed and therefore no reason they couldn't be swapped out consumer-side for preferred versions. Most women wear bras that do not fit because there are so many things that need to be right and custom-made ones run into the hundreds of dollars. But it seems an obvious market failure that I can't go into a store, pick out a left cup and a right cup and the straps of my choice, and walk out with something that will work better for me than anything I could find in Target without significant extra expense.
Most people have different sized feet and shoes are already separate yet shoes are sold in pairs of matching sizes. I suspect that if you can figure out why that is you will also gain insight into the bra question.
I'm pretty sure that at some point in my childhood I needed mismatched shoe sizes, possibly by as much as a full size — and was able to get them.
OTOH, look at the signaling implications of such a purchase. There's a big difference between knowing you're asymmetrical, and going and buying special clothing because of it. Sure, some people will buy it, but it seems unlikely to achieve mass acceptance.
Having thought about it a little longer and updated based on your evidently broader knowledge of bras, my original guess for why the market failure exists does seem pretty unlikely.