Owning a clothing business is not easy. You always have to try to predict what trends your customers will follow, and make educated guesses about which products they're likely to buy. Not to mention fabric types and prints and everything else that goes along with it.
While I primarily focused on kids items since I've opened the doors almost 6 years ago now, I started offering more adult options in 2019 and in 2020 I made a big jump. In May 2020 I made my first t-shirt dress because I wanted something comfortable to wear while making the transition to working from home. When The Maker's Hub started doing monthly pop-ups in their facebook group (brilliant pivot if I may say), I decided to try making a few and see how they did. Well, they did so well that I was having to make more dresses throughout the weekend because I sold out of so many sizes on the first day!
Needless to say, I was on to something, when the Hub opened their retail store later in 2020 I was asked to stock some dresses, and they have remained just as popular ever since. T-shirt dresses have been my number one best-selling item for the past 3 years, and I don't see any signs of that changing anytime soon.
The tricky part about making adult clothing, and especially carrying it in store and at pop-ups is sizing. While I am able to make the dresses in sizes XXS-3XL, it just wouldn't be feasible for me to carry all those sizes in stock at all times. Not to mention the fact that most of us don't fit squarely within one of the size boxes, so your bust may be a medium but your hips could be XL. Because I had to make a decision what sizes to carry regulary, I chose sizes small to extra large (and have recently added XXL to my website as well). However, I always let customers know that I am more than happy to offer custom sizing, where I make the dress to their exact measurements.
In my last post I talked about slow fashion versus fast fashion, and really, the introduction of fast fashion is why we now have standard sizing in the first place, because they needed to put something on the racks and give customers an idea which pieces were best for them. There's a reason people 80-100 years ago wore better fitting clothes than what we can buy now, because everything was made to measure by a seamstress or tailor, you couldn't buy anything from a rack. And really, standard sizing isn't even standard, which is why I can take 5 pairs of medium pants from 5 different companies and they'll all be different sizes, or why my medium shorts from 15 years ago are so much bigger than medium shorts from the same store now. And don't even get me started on vanity sizing.
If you're on instagram, you may have seen me sharing the reel that Tash Cook (@tashcook_) posted this week of a dress I made her. I took her bust, waist, hip and height measurements to make a dress specifically for her. That means that instead of being looser in some areas and tighter in others, every single part of the dress fits the exact way it was designed to, and fits her body perfectly.
All that to say, I believe clothing should be made to fit our bodies, rather than trying fit our bodies clothing based on someone else's arbitrary expectations. This is why I will always continue to offer made to measure pieces.
If you'd like me to make you a dress based on your specific measurements (bust, waist, hip and height), you can order it here.
<3
Nicole