After many hours of hard work and delicate crafting, our patron is finally ready to pick up her couture masterpiece. Giddy as we’ve ever seen her, she smiles wide and sways on the spot so that her dress twirls with her step. She can’t take her eyes off of her reflection in the mirror.
Of all our lady patrons, this young lady is perhaps the most classically feminine. While many women prefer a trouser with their suit jackets and opt for clean collared shirts, this patron wears flared skirts. She wears her jacket with a ruffled blouse and is almost always in heels. It’s not surprising to our team when she opts for something similarly feminine for the dress she’ll be wearing to a number of weddings this summer.
Our head of womenswear creates a mock-up of our head tailor’s vision; the dress is close-fitted to the hips with a tiered skirt. As with our recent Modern Qipao, the dress will have two layers with a lace overtop of a mesh. The top layer will be draped with gathers and folds which have taken many weeks assembling the muslin version to get an immaculate fit before the final fabrics are even touched. With our patron’s blessing, the womenswear team selects a sky blue lace and a sandy mesh of interconnected coiled threads for the dress. The coils make up the underside with individual coils cut and repositioned to hide seams. Various coils are positioned along the bottom of the skirt and peeking out from under the lace to give the illusion of the dress fading away down the skirt.
Still in front of the mirror, our patron twirls again. The length of the dress is flirty and the deep back neckline give the illusion that the dress is just lace and bubbles. The dress is as light as air and from a distance, it almost seems to vanish. This gives our patron’s graceful figure the appearance of being draped only in lace.
When planning a bespoke gown, patrons often bring their ideas about silhouette, colour and detail, then leave the final design up to the designers. While everything is discussed and planned throughout a series of meetings and fittings, patrons are not only being dressed but also being styled by their tailor. Many of us are quick to identify what we like or dislike in a garment, to design a garment inside and out requires an expertise only a bespoke tailor can employ. As for our patron here, she loves her new bespoke gown.
