arts&life

fashion

Curve model and fashion columnist
Jenny Rieu is the face of the new
Bloom Bras campaign.

Science

Meets

Style

Michigan-native Elyse Kaye
created a supportive solution
for big-bosomed women.

Elyse Kaye

42

March 15 • 2018

jn

JENNIFER LOVY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

E

lyse Kaye is a runner, dancer and yoga
instructor — and wears a size 31G bra.
But she could never find a comfortable
sports bra to fit her larger breasts. So, she
either avoided certain workouts or experi-
enced various discomforts when exercising,
including “horrible chafing” from wearing two
sports bras during her first half-marathon. “I
had no skin left,” recalled the former Detroiter.
Armed with an idea, a thoroughly
researched business plan and a lifetime of rel-
evant experiences, this product-development
consultant and fitness instructor assembled
a unique team of individuals and challenged
them to reinvent a sports bra specifically for
women like her.
“Having been a consumer who bought every
product on the market, I would have spent any
amount of money for a bra that fit,” said Kaye,
who now lives in San Francisco but has family,
including parents Helen and Charlie Kaye, in
Michigan.
Play Jewish geography with Kaye, formerly of
West Bloomfield, and you’ll learn that she grew
up at Temple Israel, was an avid Tamarack
camper, graduated from Andover in 1994 and
joined the largely Jewish sorority SDT while
attending Michigan State University where she
studied communications and public relations.
Kaye named her company Bloom Bras as a
tribute to her late grandmother, Francis Bloom
Kaye Tarter, who died more than 10 years ago
from breast cancer.
“I kept coming back to the name because
it was easy to remember and it tied in to my
grandmother,” Kaye said. “We were very close
and I got a lot from her, including my love of
food, passion for traveling — and my big boobs.”
In the midst of devoting her career to help-
ing others develop and market their products,
Kaye wrote her own business plan for Bloom
Bras because, like the old proverb goes: neces-

