The owner of upmarket lingerie firm Rigby & Peller for almost 30 years, 75-year-old June is the nation’s most famous bra fitter, measuring even the most majestic bust in the country — the Queen’s.
While a whole host of famous bosoms have been trussed up in her upmarket lingerie, from former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to model Sophie Dahl and actress Gwyneth Paltrow, it is her royal customers who really matter to June.
Bra-vellous: June Kenton has been taking care of royal bosoms since 1982
June has been the Queen’s bra fitter since 1982, when she and her husband, Harold, bought Rigby & Peller. The firm was founded in 1939 by two corsetieres: Gita Peller, a Hungarian Jewish refugee, and her landlady, Bertha Rigby. The company grew rapidly and was taken over by a cousin of Peller, who was awarded the Royal Warrant in 1960.
However, the warrant didn’t automatically pass to the Kentons on buying the company. Instead, June was summoned to Buckingham Palace in 1982 and ordered to demonstrate her bra-fitting skills.
‘I had to go and meet the Queen and we did a fitting and the Queen approved, so the Royal Warrant was in my name,’ she says.
Royal patronage: The Queen asked June Kenton to demonstrate her bra-fitting skills before granting the Royal Warrant. Diana was also a Rigby & Peller fan
‘I was so nervous,’ she says, becoming red-faced and flustered just remembering the meeting. ‘I never talk about it, but it was an extraordinary thing and it makes me want to fan myself!’
June has since run her eye over many a regal cleavage, fitting lingerie for the Queen Mother and the late Princess of Wales, with whom she was close friends.
They bonded not just over lingerie, but also over a shared passion for exercise and attended the same private gym.
‘I have a few letters from her. They are among my very treasured possessions,’ June says quietly. ‘She’d phone me up and I was in love with her. When you went for lunch at Kensington Palace she’d give you flowers to go home with. She was very special.’
All bra none: Princess Eugenie has followed in the footsteps of the Queen and Diana
While the royal connection to Rigby & Peller continues, with Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice buying their underwear from the firm, June’s own relationship to the company altered last month, when the Kentons sold Rigby & Peller to the Belgian lingerie company Van de Velde.
The Kentons accepted £8 million for the firm — after buying it for only £20,000 in 1982 — yet June will still sit on the board.
It is a big change for a company that has become something of a British institution — from its royal connection to kitting out thousands of blushing brides and making bespoke corsets for theatre productions and the English National Opera.
However, the brand is far from stuffy, and is also popular among young pop stars such as Lady Gaga and Jessie J, who have strutted their stuff in Rigby & Peller corsets.
The foundations for today’s brand were laid more than 50 years ago, when June and Harold opened a market stall selling ladies’ fashions in Brixton.
Within a few years they had opened Contour, a women’s underwear store, in Croydon, which moved to Hans Road, opposite Harrods, in the 1970s.
It was June’s mother’s figure that inspired the business. ‘My mother had a difficult shape and she was always having things made. I thought: “The majority of people can’t have underwear made. You have to fit them with what you’ve got in a drawer.”’
It is estimated that 85 per cent of British women still wear the wrong bra size — something June sees as her mission to rectify.
She believes the mistake most women make is buying a bra that is too big around the back, but too small a cup size, which leaves them with ridges in their clothes — and bouncing bosoms.
‘We don’t have a tape measure — it doesn’t tell you if they have a broad back and there isn’t much in the front or if they have a narrow back and are big in the front.’
The victim of a unique occupational hazard, June can’t help noticing women in ill-fitting bras wherever she goes.
‘It has become a huge habit. We’ll be driving along and I’ll say to my husband “Oh my God!” as somebody bounces across the zebra crossing, or I’ll stand in a swimming pool on holiday and watch women in their swimwear having to reorganise themselves after every length.’
'He ordered something for his wife, who was a 34B, and something for the mistress, who was a FF, and we sent thewrong one to the wrong person'
‘I always seem to be talking to someone wearing a white angora sweater who has two here [above the bosom], two more here [the actual bosoms], and two under her arms!’
While most women who are fitted for a bra are delighted to find out their actual size, as an unsupportive bra can lead to terrible back and neck ache, the results of fittings don’t always go down well with customers.
‘Women can be very vain. You can tell someone they are a D or an E cup and they will say: “I will never be a D or a DD!” ’ While many women are still wearing the wrong bra size, June says men’s underwear-buying habits have improved. ‘At one time, they had no idea and they would line up the staff and go: “She’s a bit like you and a bit like you and that’s her size!”
‘Now, we encourage the man to buy it with the understanding that his wife can bring it back or, even better, buy her a gift voucher so she can come in and be measured!’
She also recalls one gentleman who was caught philandering when his wife’s and mistress’s orders got mixed up.
‘He ordered something for his wife, who was a 34B, and something for the mistress, who was a FF, and we sent the wrong one to the wrong person. The wife got the huge one. They were eventually divorced — it was awful.’
One of June’s initiatives was to create underwear and swimwear lines for mastectomy patients — a mission important to her after her own battle with breast cancer in 2007.
‘They found mine very early and I had an implant at the same time. Even before I had breast cancer I had always seen Rigby & Peller as a fashion haven for people who’d had a mastectomy.’
June advocates regular bra fittings and insists that women should have different bras for different activities, from tennis to cocktail parties.
‘Everybody is changing shape through their life,’ and she lists pregnancy, the Pill, losing or gaining weight or HRT as major factors that result in fluctuating bra sizes. ‘You do not go to your maker the 34B you were when you were 16, but you’d be amazed how many people are still wearing that size.’
While many things — from fashions to materials and design — have altered during June’s half-century in the lingerie business, she says that the biggest change has been in the sheer size of bras.
She explains that when she started in the lingerie business, the largest cup size available was a C or a D, which had to be imported from America.
‘When we got a DD in, we had a waiting list. The largest we go up to today is an N. People are ginormous. You’d be amazed what you see in the fitting room!’
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