Sports engineer. Founder of MAAREE. She built the first Overband® at her kitchen table in 2018, after years of testing other people's sports bras for a living and never once finding one that held her. So she made the one she wanted to wear.
MAAREE started in December 2018, when Mari Thomas-Welland, a sports engineer who had spent years testing bras for a living, sat down at her kitchen table and built one that actually held her.
I tested sports bras for a job. That was the strange part of all this.
For years I was paid to wear them, write reports on them, then send them back. I tried what felt like every brand going. Compression bras. Encapsulation styles. Underwire, no wire, bigger backs, smaller backs. I knew the category inside out, and I still could not find a single bra that held me through a run. If the person whose actual job was sports bras could not find one, what hope did everyone else have?
So I built one.
The first Overband® came off my kitchen table, a sketchpad, and the kind of stubborn hunch you only get from staring at the same problem for too long. The fix was a panel that runs across the top of the chest. It controls upward bounce, the vertical movement compression bras leave well alone. The industry had spent decades solving the side-to-side and somewhere along the line just stopped asking about the up-and-down.
That was 2018. Seven years on, MAAREE has supported more than 1,600 women, won Sports Bra of the Year 2025, and the Overband® is in every single bra we make. The kitchen table is now a small team and three manufacturing partners, but the brief is exactly the same: build sports bras for the bodies the industry overlooked. Bigger busts. Real movement. Real sweat.
The best part of the job is still the inbox. The women who ran further than they have in years. The ones who stopped dreading the warm-up. The messages that make you well up at your desk on a Tuesday. None of that ever shows up on a spreadsheet, and it is the whole reason any of us turn up.
If you have ever finished a workout sore from your bra rather than your training, you are in exactly the right place.
Before MAAREE, I spent years in motion-capture labs testing other brands' sports bras for a living. That is where the gap became impossible to ignore.
Most bras on the market are never tested like this at all.
We start with the body, not the bra. Bust, underbust, sternum height, shoulder width.
Two on the clavicles, one on the sternum, two on the fullest part of each breast. The first three sit still. The last two tell us how much they don't.
A couple of minutes on the treadmill at pace. 3D cameras track every marker, frame by frame.
The chest moves in a loop, side-to-side and up-and-down. Compression bras handle the horizontal. The Overband® was built for the part most bras leave alone.
The flatter the chest markers run against the clavicle and sternum, the better the bra. We don't ship a design that doesn't move the line.
None of that is marketing copy. It is the same test the rest of the industry runs, then quietly ignores.
Overband® Technology is the curved panel built into every MAAREE sports bra that controls upward bounce, the vertical movement compression-only bras leave alone.
Most sports bras are built for compression. They flatten and they squeeze, and that takes care of the side-to-side. The up-and-down, the part you feel the second a bra gives up on you, is the bit the category mostly pretends is not happening.
The Overband® runs over the top of the chest. On the Solidarity Bra it adjusts under each arm, so the tension is yours to set. On every other MAAREE bra it is pre-set during manufacture and calibrated for that bra's support level. Either way, it does the one thing nothing else on the market does.
Read the full Overband® page →
Three families of sports bras, all built around the Overband®, sized from a 28C through to a 38HH on the high-impact end, and XS through to XXL on the everyday end.
The original. Sized 28 to 38 back, C to HH cup. The only MAAREE bra with the adjustable Overband®. Built for runners, rowers, riders, and anyone whose chest moves more than the bra industry has ever cared to allow for.
Shop Solidarity
Sized XS to XXL. The everyday training bra. Pre-set Overband®, calibrated for studio classes, the gym floor, and the long walk home afterwards.
Shop Empower
Sized XS to XXL. Crew neck. For yoga, strength training, dog walks, recovery days, and the bra you pull on first thing and forget you are even wearing.
Shop UpliftMAAREE exists to support women so that they are empowered to achieve their potential.
We are guided by out three pillars.
When your kit holds you properly, the bra stops being the thing you think about, and you get on with exactly what you came to do.
We share everything we know about fit, support and how breasts actually move, so you can choose with confidence instead of guesswork.
We came at sports bras from engineering, not fashion, and we keep refining our products until the support is measurably better.
The things people ask us most before their first MAAREE bra.
MAAREE was founded in December 2018 by Mari Thomas-Welland, a sports engineer who spent years testing sports bras professionally and could not find one that held her own chest. She built the first Overband® at her kitchen table.
The Overband® is a curved panel that runs across the top of the chest on every MAAREE bra. It controls upward bounce, the vertical movement compression-only sports bras do not address. On the Solidarity Bra the Overband® is adjustable under each arm. On every other bra it is pre-set during manufacture.
The Solidarity Bra runs 28 to 38 back, C to HH cup, with most cup sizes available across most back sizes. Not every combination is made (there is no 28C and no 38HH, for example). The Empower and Uplift bras are sized XS to XXL. A free fitting will confirm the right size for you.
MAAREE works with manufacturing partners in China, Sri Lanka, and Europe. The factory for each bra is chosen for the specialism that bra needs, rather than concentrating production in one country.
Every MAAREE bra has Overband® Technology, the curved panel that controls upward bounce. Most of the sports bra market addresses compression and side-to-side movement and leaves the vertical axis alone. MAAREE is engineered the other way: bigger busts first, vertical bounce first, everyday wearability second.
Yes. Every MAAREE fitting is free, with no purchase required before, during, or after. Online fittings run for 15 minutes over video. In-person fittings run a little longer. A MAAREE expert will measure you, confirm your size across the range, and answer your fit questions.
Two. Every MAAREE bra is covered by a 12-month guarantee against manufacturing defects. On top of that, every fitting comes with a 90-day chafe-free guarantee, so if a bra you've been fitted for rubs or chafes within 90 days, get in touch through the contact page and the team will sort it. Both are part of The MAAREE Promise.
