Photo by John French 1963
Michelle and her mother (who flew in from New York City) had our complimentary initial consultation a little over a month ago in my studio/home here in Hillsborough. This (totally free) meeting is a time for us to interview and get to know each other. Participation and communication are vital to my dressmaking and design process, so I make sure that there is a time to ask lots of questions and to go over my contracts and policies before ever making any kind of monetary commitment to my services. The custom process is certainly not for everyone.
Fortunately, Michelle turns out to be a perfect custom client.
Former brides of mine, Katie and Leah, let me borrow their dresses to show Michelle and her mom. It’s important to be able to see my quality of work up front, since we will be making the dress from scratch. A couture handmade dress has a different look than the sewing factory clothes we are all so used to seeing today. Inspecting dresses that I’ve made for weddings in the past is a way to get a glimpse of what your dress will end up looking like when it is finally ready to walk down the aisle. Michelle and her mom both told me that they loved the dresses that I showed them, inside and out.
We started getting to know each other and I realized that I really liked Michelle. She’s very fun, and easy to talk to, and she has no hint of Bridezilla. She has a great personality and is very intelligent, independent, and beautiful.
We started talking about Michelle’s style. She likes looks that are very simple, understated, sophisticated and elegant. She told me that she really loved the look of the forties, fifties and early sixties. She loved looking at older movies “when the heroines were office girls, wearing Chanel and Givenchy”. I love it!!
I felt that the two of us were really hitting it off and had a similar design aesthetic. I was really excited to hear more specifics about her wedding dress ideas for her October wedding. But what she started describing actually surprised me a bit. One word in particular that she mentioned, sort of changes the topic to one that I want to delve deeper into.
So it’s a cliffhanger!…. Stay tuned for my next blog post: Initial Consultation pt. 2 (Strapless).
