Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Dress Fit and Finish- very important

Dresses should be tailored properly to your body. A well tailored dress either for the bride, the mother of the bride, celebrant or attendee, a good fit makes everyone look thinner, more shapely, and much better in pictures. Here are a few tips to tell if your dress fits you right.

1. Strapless height-
Everyone has a different breast shape, size, placement, and height. Strapless dresses still constitute a statistical majority of all bridal gown sales. Just because the seamstress says the dress should fit a certain way does not mean that it should fit YOU that way. Here are some tips.
a. comfort- if you aren't comfortable with the height, hit, and cut of the strapless line, ask that it be altered, you should adjust, shift or ask that extra material such as a detail strap be placed in the area of concern.
b. shapeliness- many peoples breasts topple under or over strapless dresses. If the dress is too large in the top it should not be adjusted just at the sides (which is the easiest and hence most common approach). The dress should be taken in at the front seams as well to accommodate a smaller bust. Similarly large busted girls should order a dress a size larger than you normally would. Then take the center over the bust seams and contour them appropriately over your bust taking it in at the top of the bust so that the dress cups the breast rather than causes it to spill and prop over the gown.
This may alter how the dress sits on your waist, but again a good seamstress should be able to make these modifications.
Please note that I highly recommend that if you have a disproportionately large bust that you try and find a gown that makes dresses in cup sizes, see Augusta Jones, for a moderately priced range of exceptionally crafted gowns ($2000-$4000)

2. Waist- The waist of your gown should be fitted so that you are snug when standing and even snugger sitting, but never too loose. Loose waists begin to stretch and pooch after some wearing, creating an appearance of waist fat on even the thinnest woman.

3. Hem- a properly hemmed dress should be adjusted to your shoe height and your interest in showing your feet. Regardless, a dress should never puddle on the ground nor sweep the ground in the front to avoid stepping on the gown.

Those are my best tips for dress fit.... Make sure you find a good alterations specialist, and make sure that you have good communication with them, many alterations can be made to a gown and they will turn an average dress into extraordinary.

2 comments:

Mark Kuroda said...

Hi Marlowe! How's everything. Your blog continues to be a wealth of knowledge. Best wishes for 2009!

Unknown said...

Excellent tips.!! I always consider perfect size strapless dresses.