Six women, one dress, six different bodies. It flatters about two of them, and in the photographs you can see which two.
The bridesmaid collections are designed the other way round. Rather than putting everyone in the same dress, we build a set that holds together as a palette and a mood, and let each dress suit the person actually wearing it.
What holds a collection together
Not the pattern. Usually one or two of these, chosen at the consultation:
- one fabric, cut into different silhouettes
- one colour, at two or three depths of it
- one detail carried across every dress, a strap, a neckline finish, a hem
- one length, with the necklines left free
That is enough for the party to read as one group standing behind you. It is also enough to let a bridesmaid who never wears strapless not wear strapless.
Every dress is still tailored to its wearer
Each dress in a collection is made to the proportions and body type of the woman it is for, in the same way the bride's gown is. Nobody is put into a neckline that does not work for them so that a set photograph can be symmetrical.
The point of a bridal party is that it looks like your people. Six copies of one dress looks like a uniform.
Where the bride's own gown sits in it
Design the gown first, or at least settle its direction, and then the collection around it. It is the harder of the two and the one with fewer degrees of freedom, and a palette built to a finished gown is a different palette from one built to a guess. That direction comes out of the bridal consultation, which is worth having before the group conversation rather than after it.
If your gown carries heavy hand work, the collection usually wants to be quieter than you first imagine. That is a decision to make deliberately at the consultation rather than to discover in the photographs.
The two questions we cannot answer here
Whether there is a minimum order for a collection, and the size range the atelier makes to, are not published on this site. Both depend on the collection and neither should be guessed at in a blog post, so ask on WhatsApp before you plan around an answer. A collection is priced the way everything else here is, which what decides the price of a bespoke gown explains.
Bring the group to the conversation if you can, or at least bring their opinions. You can see the collections we have made on the bridesmaids section of the home page, and ask for a consultation through the form.
