Levana Bratique supports girls head to toe
Shop works with group that donates materials to needy
PITTSBURGH — Most American women start their days by slipping on a pair of underwear and clasping on a bra. For up to a week each month, many are using feminine hygiene products, which are replaced every few hours. Plenty will use face-specific soap before applying moisturizer — and probably a different type for the rest of their bodies — and a bevy of makeup products might follow.
That’s easily $100 worth of goods, and her day barely began.
Although viewed as basic supplies to those with means, bras, underwear and feminine hygiene supplies are luxuries to those struggling financially. That’s why Judy Masucci, owner of bra and lingerie shop Levana Bratique in suburban Pittsburgh, got involved with nonprofit organization I Support the Girls in 2017.
ISTG’s bubblegum pinkand-teal-decorated van was a gift from Amazon and singer-songwriter and television personality Kelly Rowland last year. It draws attention with an anthropomorphized tampon on the side with “Yep, this van is full of tampons” in a thought bubble, which is honest advertising: Women in need are welcome to gather some essentials such as bras, underwear and menstrual products.
Through a network of international affiliates, the group distributes bras and menstrual hygiene products to those experiencing homelessness, poverty or trauma. Founding a local chapter was a “good fit” for Masucci, given the nature of her store and her desire
to serve the community, a value she learned during childhood.
Following the group’s original model, she and her herd of volunteers donated products to homeless shelters, homes for abused women, churches, schools and more, but COVID-19 presented a new group in need.
“With the pandemic, we realized there were all these people who weren’t homeless or in a shelter, but they still couldn’t provide basic necessities for themselves and their families,” Masucci said. “We started a program to reach those people.”
Coordinated through her ISTG affiliate, her team distributed 60,000 items — such as bras, underwear, feminine hygiene products, masks and mascara — from March through August 2020. Those efforts were recognized in New York City with the Philanthropic Excellence honor
given at the Curve Awards, which took place alongside the Curve Expo, an international lingerie industry trade show.
“There are other retailers giving back to their communities but not on the scale that Judy has, especially this past year,” Kirsten Griffin, visitor promotions director for the Curve Expo and Curve Awards co-organizer, said. “Her store is successful, not just in terms of numbers; successful in terms of giving back to the community.”
The “Dr.” Judy uses before her name denotes a Ph.D. earned “many, many moons ago.” After growing up in Torrington, Connecticut, and earning an undergraduate degree at Smith College, she completed a doctorate in genetics at Columbia University. Various positions at biotech companies followed, but those 60-hour weeks came to a screeching halt when
she had her son in 2005.
She tried working a mere nine hours per day, traveling with her breastfeeding baby and his nanny, but none of it felt like enough. “I felt like I was failing as a mother and as a corporate executive, and I wasn’t happy,” she said. Knowing what it felt like to fall in love with a new baby, struggle with breastfeeding and balance all the goals that moms do, she wanted to find a way to help them.
She quit her job and attended a small business development group through Duquesne University.
The business she formulated, A Mother’s Boutique, launched in 2007 in the same Wexford space where her store is now. Maternity clothing and bras and nursing bras were her focus, but her services evolved when less commonly proportioned women began frequenting her store because it was the only
place they could find bras that fit. It caused a shift in her passions.
“If your undergarments don’t feel good, they don’t fit right, you’re spilling out of them, it really affects someone’s self-confidence to close that deal, get that job, get their kids to school,” she said. “The sad part is that most people don’t even know there’s something better out there.”
A Mother’s Boutique became Levana Bratique in 2016. Although the store sells mid- to high-end bras and lingerie, swankiness isn’t the focus: It’s inclusivity. It carries every bra size made — A-though-W cups, 28-to-56-inch bands— in every skin tone available. And fitting appointments last an hour to get it all right.
By late 2017, Masucci founded the Southwestern ISTG affiliate, and her first donation event took place at Braddock’s Free Store. In a pop-up changing room, she measured around 75 women, who took home properly fitting bras for the first time in their lives, and they were free of charge.
Since then she’s donated menstrual products, beauty supplies, moisturizers and face washes to the Free Store, although she might be best known for the $30 mascaras she once dropped off.
“Everyone kept saying, ‘Look at my eyelashes! It opened up my eyes!’ ” said Gisele Fetterman, Free Store founder and now second lady of Pennsylvania.
“Judy has done an amazing job to help create access for some items that many people probably wouldn’t consider a necessity, but they really are. We all deserve to feel good about ourselves.”
Adrian Foy, 36, of Baldwin Borough, “jumped” at the chance to work at Levana Bratique in 2018 because of its association with ISTG.
A separate room in the Bratique is filled with ISTG goods, which come from all directions. Lingerie vendors donate their extras. Store customers donate gently used bras. The ISTG main office, located in Maryland, distributes goods provided by corporate partnerships.
Foy usually matches supply with demand, calling churches and shelters, then stuffing boxes full of products needed by their populations, at least since COVID-19 precautions have halted on-location events. When she started her complementary roles, she thought the colorful bras and their silky fabrics would steal the show, but they don’t. It’s the underwear.
“We have people who cry, people who hug us, people who are so thankful for things they really shouldn’t even have to worry about,” Masucci said.