‘In Taiwan, it’s normal to get your clothes tailored,’ says 26-year-old Christine Lo, the woman who launched the site with her partner, Yann Gerardi.
‘You can get anything made. When friends come to visit I always take them to the tailors. When I visited Europe, I saw this didn’t happen, so I had the idea.’
It’s not a cheap option, of course, with prices ranging from £220 up to £350 depending on design and fabric choice, but then this isn’t sweatshop manufacturing, says Lo.
‘Our studio is small, and the seamstresses and cutters are experienced,’ she says.
Seams perfectly contouring your body, the waist placed just so, sleeves the ideal length and not an out-of-place fold to be seen.
Custom-made clothing might seem an unobtainable luxury, the preserve of A-listers commissioning top designers and stylists, bonus-laden City bankers at Savile Row and extravagant brides for whom off-the-peg simply won’t do.
Yet for our grandparents, handmade clothing was not so unusual — whether home-stitched, bought from a local seamstress or ordered from a big department store.
Pictured here is a one-off piece by Gorgeous Couture
And now a new breed of online boutiques is making custom-made fashion easy to buy once more — and more affordable than it’s ever been, thanks to technology and clever design.
Take, for instance, Fit Me So (www.fitmeso.com), a Taiwan-based company that allows the customer to design the perfect dress on its website, choose a fabric and have it delivered to their home in around a week.
Nevertheless, for some shoppers the made-in-Britain factor is an important part of getting the perfect Girlpromdresses2016 made from scratch — abandoning fast High Street fashion, which so often gets it wrong — in favour of beautifully crafted pieces that fit perfectly, will last, and are made locally.
