How to Choose the Right Dress.

There are some girls who dream about their wedding day from kindergarten.
Every thing is clear in their head before they even find Mr Right, but what if you have no idea what sort of dress you want or what if you try on the dress of your dreams & you feel more like the pumpkin than Cinderella.

Well here are some quick tips to help discover the dress that is perfect for you.
The best place to start is time of year.
What season are you planning to have your wedding?
It’s all very well to choose a strapless dress for the middle of winter, but unless you want to spend your honeymoon with pneumonia, you might need to consider the added expense of accessories to keep you warm while travelling or during outdoor photos.
Equally, if your wedding is at the height of summer, choosing a huge polyester meringue with lots of petticoats & boning, could leave you overheated & uncomfortable for the entire day.
Spring: This is the season when almost anything goes. You are unlikely to have a scorching or freezing day, so you can wear something with layers & structure without being too worried about you comfort. 

Summer: Try to choose natural fibres like cotton & silk which breathe better on hot days, in a light weaves like satin charmeuse, chiffon, georgette, organza, crepe, lace. Strapless gowns or spaghetti straps are also perfect options for the warmer weather. 

Silk chiffon Silk Trader

Autumn: When the weather turns cool this is a time to look at more structured & heavier fabrics. Brocades, Duchess satin, taffeta, shantung, satin back crepe, jacquard. You can also choose lovely caplets, shrugs & boleros to complement you dress when the weather turns chilly.

Ava Lace Capelet Empireroom

Royal Duchess Satin Latte: Silk Trader

Winter: You don’t have to dress like an eskimo at a winter wedding, but you can now consider warmer fabrics like velvet, even wool blends. Accessories really come into their own at Winter weddings. Imagine a full length floaty cape with a hood, a lace knit angora shawl, an ostrich feather capelet.

Pinterest

The next thing to think about is the theme of your wedding & your own personal style.
Gone are the days where time of day dictates the style of your gown, you can have whatever length & style of dress your heart desires.
This is your chance to be a princess for a day, or step back in time for a touch Downtown Abbey or Hairspray, go green with an eco friendly gown, or it could just be a glammed up extension of what you feel comfortable wearing every day.

Downtown Abbey Pinterest

No one has to have a full length dress & veil anymore.

There are all the usual styles: ballgown, a-line, shift or column, mermaid, princess, empire line, strapless, halter, asymmetric, off the shoulder

But other there are options you may not have considered

Skirt & top
skirt & cardigan
short
vintage
ballerina or tea length
suit
jumpsuit




My suggestion is to start a Pinterest board & search for what you like.
I have a few wedding boards for inspiration
Vintage Wedding Dress Inspiration
Wedding-ness
Capelet, Cover Ups & Collars
The Way We Were - Vintage Weddings

You’ll very soon start to see a pattern emerging. Then consider the time of year, your theme & your venue wishes, which hopefully will narrow the field.
In recent years I dreamed I would wear a bias cut satin 1930's figure hugging frock, no lace, be married in my church with my church band & hymns. In reality I wore a 1950's silk organza & lace tea length frock with a blue petticoat & red shoes, at a winery in the Yarra Valley, with a couple of friends singing. It was perfection.

If you are planning on having a custom made dress I highly recommend, going on a field trip, armed with some inspiration. You really need to try on some styles before settling on what you want to have made. Don’t expect to find IT on the first trip, but just go to see what suits you, what feels right, what makes you shudder, & what makes your Mum cry.

What is the Difference Between Silk & Satin?

Usually the answer to this question is something like 'Silk is natural & more expensive, satin is a cheaper man-made alternative.'
WRONG!
This must be one of my biggest sewing peeves. Obviously being a seamstress & milliner I have learned about fabrics, their weaves, their fibres & their uses, & I can excuse those who don't sew for not knowing. But the number of sewists & bloggers who claim to have a clue, get this answer wrong.
The difference between silk & satin is, silk is a fibre & satin is a weave.
SILK is the content of the fabric.
Like wool, cotton, cashmere, linen, viscose rayon, polyester, nylon & tencel etc, silk is a thread  & is derived from silk worms. If you look at any clothing tag it should list the fibre content that is either natural or man-made or a blend of fibres. You should not see satin listed here.

Silk in the raw looks like this.

 SATIN, however is not a fibre, but a weave that typically has a glossy surface and a dull back. The satin weave is characterised by four or more weft yarns floating over a warp yarn or vice versa, four warp yarns floating over a single weft yarn. 
For example

Source Study Blue Textiles Flash cards

So you can have silk satin which is more expensive & luxurious, it will fall differently to a man-made fibre content. Equally you can have poly, nylon or acetate stains, which are cheaper & don't have the same feel or sheen. Other natural fibres can also be used for satins, such as cotton, which is usually known as sateen, & even wool.
There are some fabulous man-made satins produced these days, & when it comes to something like the heavier weight Duchess or Elizabeth satins they can be be quite stunning & reasonable hard to distinguish, even to the trained eye/touch. I've been fooled on more than one occasion.
And when you want the dress of you dreams at a more affordable price, they are a good alternative.

Here endeth the lesson on silk & satin.

New Direction: Vintage Couture Gowns

When I first started out after my course at the Melbourne School of Fashion, I made quite a lot of wedding dresses for private clients.

It was such a huge learning curve.  Every client & dress was different. 

From a Frost Green Medieval Velvet gown to Gothic Revival to great big beaded meringues & restyling Mum's 1960's dress.


With each new gown I learned so much about pattern making, fabric suitability, fixed quotes & hand embellishing.
From there I went to work at Adele Chapeaux in Toorak for a couple of years, before heading back to uni to study costume design.

Along the way I have continued to make a select number of wedding & evening gowns, via word of mouth, but it seems like time to start creating couture gowns in earnest again.

In 16 years of costume making I have amassed a vast collection of vintage patterns dating back to the 1920's through to the 1960's &  since the Vintage clothing revival does not look as if it is slowing down I have decided to start recreating some of those gorgeous designs for modern fashionistas who long for a taste of yesteryear.






So without further ado, Empireroom Vintage Couture is open for business.
Make an appointment for a design consultation today & let us create the Vintage gown of your dreams.

Come & visit me at Empire Room