22 Jun Making Of: Custom Wedding Dress
Mass produced wedding dresses and clothes in general can not be compared to custom made pieces and the reason is simple. Mass production focuses on quantity over quality, as the main goal is profit, profit, profit… which means one thing – fast production and cutting production costs as much as possible. That is why, apart from the quality of the craftsmanship and everything else, the quality of the materials is usually also very poor. Since time is of essence with mass produced clothing, there is huge pressure to manufacture these pieces as fast as possible, since speed is the key to success when it comes to mass production.
However, if you are looking into custom made fashion and into custom made wedding dresses in particular, there are a lot of things that you need to understand.
First of all, the focus is always on quality! Quality over anything else! And achieving high quality takes time.
Custom made wedding dresses are never machine-made, they are always hand-tailored from scratch and, therefore, you need to keep in mind the amount of manual labor and man-hours that go into production of one custom wedding dress.
It all starts with preparation for production. First your measurements need to be carefully and thoroughly examined to eliminate any possible errors. In case some inconsistencies are found in the measurements, the measurements in question need to be double-checked with you. Then the updated measurements need to be examined thoroughly once again. After the measurements are confirmed, the production does not start just yet.
First, all of the materials, all of the main fabrics as well as lining fabrics etc. need to be pre-cut based on your individual measurements (and with luxurious wedding gowns there are often lots of different materials used on a dress that, at first glance from a photo, you can not see). The amount of décor needed for your gown needs to be calculated based on your size and buttons, hooks, zippers etc. need to be put aside for the final production stage. Then a custom stencil needs to be prepared for you, once again, based fully upon your individual measurements. With ready-made clothing, there are simply bunch of stencils for each standard size. However, when it comes to custom sizing, a custom stencil needs to be created for each client individually, which takes time.
Now the manufacturing process can finally begin! Of course – fully by hand which, once again, equals time, but apart of time it also equals quality. With each small piece of décor being carefully sewn on by hand, you understand that it is truly worth the wait, especially comparing to ready-made dresses that often use glue as much as they can which, apart from the distinctive smell, also means you might be losing pieces of the décor already when taking the dress out of the box.
The hours needed for the production of one custom made wedding gown vary dress to dress, of course, however, in general it does not take less than around 160 hours which, given the elaborate process we have just explained, seems like a fair deal, doesn’t it?
For instance, Britney Spearse’s Versace wedding dress, even though quite simple at first glance, took over 700 hours to be made!
Apart from the preparation time and the manufacturing time, such custom pieces need to undergo multiple strict quality control procedures on every stage of production to ensure that every stitch is nothing short of the highest quality and that every detail is an absolute perfection! After all – devil is in the details.
We, at Devotion, have added one more step to the whole process and that is our personal final scrupulous quality control procedure which is conducted by a team of different tailors than the ones who have worked on the dress. This ensures that the end product you receive from us is absolutely impeccable.
Take a look at some of our most popular dresses below and check out all our Bestsellers here.
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