Kelly Cox hates velcro, especially in surgical recovery bras.
“I mean, these are the shape they’re always in, you know, they never fully strap on,” said Cox, of Charlottesville, a birth doula, pre- and post-natal yoga teacher, and entrepreneur, “and so you have these random spots of velcro that are all over. Then there’s this huge contraption. You can imagine if you had to wear this for six weeks. First of all, white, it’s just going to get blood on it, there’s no place to put your drains, but, again, it’s these huge velcro strips which, I mean, the velcro will at some point just open up and scratch you. It’s horrible!”
Cox should know. She was 42 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and told she had the BRACA2 gene mutation, which ups her risk of developing other cancers. Since then, she’s had eight surgeries, including a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction.
But it wasn’t until earlier this year when Cox had the breast implants removed—called “explant” surgery—that she decided to do something about the hospital-issue recovery bras that she found so ill-fitting, painful, and, well, ugly.
“Recovery is good for me,” Cox said in an Instagram post on March 31, "except for the post-surgical recovery bra. I’ve worn so many of them in the last 8 1/2 years, they’re all awful, they’re horribly awful…”
Cox aired her grievances on Instagram, showing places where her skin had been rubbed raw by the bra. That caught the eye of New Jersey bra designer Amanda Hunt, who, by April, mailed Cox a hand-sewn prototype that was soft, had several rows of hook-and eye front closures for controllable compression, and buttoned loops to tether drain tubes. And no velcro.
“I literally put it on, put the tubing through all the snaps, and went out to see some friends, like, in a normal shirt, and no one would have known,” said Cox. “I wore it for several days and I didn’t feel like I had a surgical bra on, I just felt like I just had a bra on. I actually felt pretty.”
And that’s important, says UVA Health surgical oncologist Dr. Lynn Dengel, who specializes in breast cancer and melanoma.
“You know, there’s data to show that that does improve overall quality of life in the post-operative period if we can help patients have, you know, a quicker return to feeling like themselves,” Dengel said. “If it looks more like something they would normally wear, it’s going to make them feel less like when they look in the mirror, that they’re just recovering from surgery.”
“She’s arrived,” Cox enthused in an April 7 Instagram post, “this gorgeous, very comfortable, beautiful material, it’s lace, you might not be able to tell that . . . there’s these little buttons here, just little snaps that can hold the drains there, and then instead of it coming underneath the bra, which where before, I had kind of ripped off all this skin, this allows me to pull it up from the drain, and then attach right here . . . this is by far better than any surgical recovery bra I’ve ever had. There's great compression, there’s three lines of little snaps, so if you want it tighter, you can do that, and adjustable straps . . . I love this.”
This summer, Cox and Hunt tinkered some more, widening the bra’s arm holes, simplifying its seams, adding pockets for prosthetics, and finessing the drain-organizing button loops. They hope the final design—intended for women who’ve had any kind of chest surgery, including heart surgery—will stay in their bra rotation well past recovery.
Here’s bra designer Amanda Hunt, who owns Davin & Adley Lingerie.
“There are right now surgical recovery bras, and then mastectomy bras that have the pocketed ability to add a prosthetic or a foam pad. We’re building both of those in together,” explained Hunt. “So, this bra would be your surgical recovery, and then, once your drains are no longer in need, you can also put your prosthetic into the pockets on the inside. So, we’re trying to have that longevity here so that a woman could wear this much longer than that four- to six-week window.”
Soon, they’ll produce 75 bras to pitch breast surgeons and their patients. With that feedback in hand, their final bra—which will cost between $60 and $80—should be on the market this winter.
Though the new bra still hasn’t been named, Hunt’s got an idea in tune with her company’s other products, like the Amelia, Ella, and Riley bras.
“I absolutely can see us calling this the Kelly,” Hunt said.