Alterations Boutique Dressmaking and Tailoring

Dresses Have Become More Popular in Fashion Stores in the Last Couple of Years. There is so much advice available online, on TV and in the fashion pages about what to wear, how to wear it and dressing for one’s body shape that shopping for clothes can become less of a pleasure than it should be.

A particularly fraught area is women’s dresses, currently making a comeback on the fashion scene. It would be impossible for manufacturers to produce off the peg clothes in anything but a range of standardised sizes.  However, there is some evidence that the predominant women’s body shapes vary depending on their country of origin, so that a standardised design made in the USA may be different from one manufactured in the UK, for example.

When choosing clothes the advice is to choose something that the woman likes and makes her feel confident.  Although it can be handy to take along a trusted friend when choosing something for an important occasion it needs to be someone who can be relied on to be honest and to say when something really does not look right.

There are four classic women’s body shapes, although some stylists may identify several more. However, the basic shapes are generally described as apple (triangle downward), pear (triangle upward), banana (straight up and down) and hourglass (two opposing triangles).

When choosing dresses it is best is to select something that maximises the good points and plays down the bad points of a woman’s body shape. For example a woman with an apple (ie top heavy) body shape may want to choose a dress that accentuates her small waist, her hips and shapely legs. That would eliminate any features like frills that accentuate the top half while a nipped in waist and a gathered or pleated skirt would work well.

Rarely is anyone built to the perfect standardised size and it is likely that a dress whose top fits perfectly may be too big on the hips or a bit too long.  This need not mean giving up the search for the perfect dress in exasperation. The answer is to buy something as close as possible to the dress a woman has in mind but in a size that allows for a dress alteration to achieve the perfect fit.

An experienced dressmaker will be able to make the dress alterations necessary to transform something almost right into something perfect.  A dress alteration can be anything from a complete revamp or remodel to small adjustments such as removing a trimming that doesn’t work to ensuring it fits correctly to the waist or hips and hangs at the right length for the woman’s height and leg length.

As women have had less time and skill for dressmaking these skills are much in demand whether they are searching for dress alterations in London or elsewhere around the country.