This week on Sciencetits, we, Dr. Brenda Finney and Dr. Frances Hall gleefully abandon the lab coats (but not the curiosity) to explore a different kind of science altogether: the science of getting dressed without wanting to cry in a fitting room. And to guide us through the complex equations of style, confidence, and chest‑related mysteries, we welcome the brilliant and endlessly delightful Anna Berkeley.
Anna isn’t just a stylist — she’s basically the Marie Curie of clothes, minus the radiation and plus some extremely chic trousers. With nearly 30 years in the fashion trenches, she’s worked with over 130 global brands, spent seven years buying designer denim at Selfridges, jet‑setted to fashion weeks around the world, and written for a lineup of publications so impressive it makes the rest of us feel like we’ve wasted our lives (The Times, The Telegraph, FT, Stella, Red, etc.). In 2023, she took all that expertise and distilled it into Think Shape, the groundbreaking app that helps women understand fit, proportion, and why that top you loved on the hanger makes you look like a disgruntled lampshade.
In this episode, we rewind all the way back to Anna’s early days in fashion buying, where she discovered what women actually want from clothes (spoiler: things that fit) and how working behind the glamorous storefronts, with other stylists and hundreds of women gave her a PhD‑level understanding of body shapes and how to help us find our style.
Then we dive into the big question: Why did the world need Think Shape? Anna talks about the experiences that sparked the app, the recurring frustrations she saw in women’s shopping experiences, and the realisation that figuring out your proportions shouldn’t require a protractor, an anthropology degree, and three glasses of wine.
We also get into the hot topic of the moment: how modern fashion often ignores the glorious diversity of women’s chests. (Don’t worry, it’s all aboveboard and scientifically phrased.) Anna breaks down how her Body Map process finally gives women vocabulary — and solutions — for understanding their upper‑half architecture. Necklines, structure, balance… it’s basically the TED Talk you didn’t know you needed.
From there, we explore what it was like for Anna to transform her stylist superpowers into software. She shares the weirdest challenges of making an app that feels personal, not judgemental, and how she managed to keep Think Shape empowering instead of becoming yet another digital gremlin whispering, “Have you tried being smaller?”
Finally, Anna reflects on the unexpected joys (and shocks) of becoming a tech founder, plus the early user feedback that shaped Think Shape into the game‑changing tool it is today.
It’s funny, it’s warm, it’s surprisingly educational, and it might just change the way you get dressed tomorrow morning.
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Content outlined and presented by Brenda Finney and Frances Hall.
Music from audiojungle.net – Konstantin Kasyanov
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