The underwire bra has been around in essentially the same form since 1931, when inventor Helene Pons received a U.S. patent for a brassiere built around an open-ended wire loop. Nearly a century later, that uncomfortable design still dominates a global bra market projected to exceed nearly $60 billion by 2032. For Bree McKeen, that was a problem worth solving — even if it meant walking away from a promising career in venture capital.
McKeen had been working at a boutique VC firm in Silicon Valley, doing due diligence on consumer health care companies, when she noticed a pattern. After long days hunched over a desk, she’d come home with shoulder divots and persistent tension headaches. The culprit wasn’t her workload — it was her bra.
The realization crystallized during a session with a physiologist she’d been seeing about her posture. She mentioned the discomfort almost offhandedly, and the physiologist explained what was happening: her body was locked in a neuromuscular feedback loop, instinctively curling around the source of pain — the same way you’d unconsciously favor a foot with a pebble in the shoe.
“Here I am doing all this work to carry myself with authority and poise, and my bra is totally doing the opposite,” McKeen said. “You don’t have to tell your body to curl around the pain. It just does.”
From Due Diligence to Patent Filing
McKeen had no background in fashion — her degrees were in medical anthropology and business administration from Stanford. But her VC experience gave her one critical insight: without intellectual property protection, a woman-led startup would struggle to attract funding. So before she’d even built a working prototype, she moved to Portland — home to Nike, Adidas, and Columbia Sportswear — and started tinkering in her garage while simultaneously pursuing patents.
She secured her first utility patent within a year. That’s the harder kind to obtain — it covers how something actually works, not just its appearance. Today, her company Evelyn & Bobbie holds 16 international patents protecting its proprietary EB Core technology, which replicates the lift and structure of an underwire without the rigidity or discomfort. McKeen herself holds six of those patents — notable given that only around 12% of U.S. patents have historically been awarded to women, according to the USPTO.
The brand takes its name from McKeen’s maternal grandmother Evelyn and her aunt Bobbie. Its core premise is simple: a bra that fits properly and stays comfortable through a full day of wear.
Designing for How Women Actually Are Built
The average bra size in the United States is 34F — a fact that surprises most people, including many of the investors McKeen pitched early on. She recalled spending the majority of hour-long investor meetings just trying to convince people that comfort was a legitimate selling point in a market dominated by push-up padding and sex appeal.
Part of what distinguishes Evelyn & Bobbie from larger competitors is its approach to fit. While most bra manufacturers work from one or two fit models and scale sizing up from a single sample — a method that notoriously breaks down at larger sizes — McKeen uses 270 fit models across seven size categories, with each style individually graded rather than mathematically extrapolated.
“Every woman I talked to had 20 bras in her drawer, but she wore like two of them — the ugly, comfy ones,” McKeen said. “I wanted a bra that made me look better in my clothes. Wire-free bras give you that mono boob — not a nice silhouette. I wanted nice lift, separation, a beautiful silhouette.”
Now the Fastest-Growing Brand at Nordstrom
The gamble has paid off. Evelyn & Bobbie is now the fastest-growing brand at Nordstrom — a remarkable position in a category crowded with well-funded players including Victoria’s Secret, ThirdLove, Aerie, and Savage X Fenty.
McKeen has also built a clinical following: New York-based plastic surgeon Dr. Nina Naidu sends Evelyn & Bobbie bras home with every post-operative patient. A dedicated Slack channel collects customer testimonials, and a sports bra line is in development.
The bras retail for $98 — a premium price point, but one McKeen frames as consistent with how consumers already spend on performance apparel.
“Comfort is the new luxury,” she said. “We spend money on yoga pants that make us look and feel great. I’m going to make the premium bra the bra of the future.”