Saturday, April 3, 2010

have you met Gloria?


Gloria was my high school graduation present. She is a Uniquely You dress form. The concept behind her is that she is a foam body, so she has some give and squishiness like a human body, with a fitted dress cover. The dress cover you fit to yourself or whoever and make the adjustments and then zip the dress over the form. There are 2 sizes you need to choose: the size of the foam body based on your hip and waist measurements and the size of the dress based on your bust measurement. I am kind of between sizes. I bought a small foam body with the smallest dress cover size. I should have bought the petite foam body size with the largest dress size. Needless to say Gloria is much bigger than I am and has earned the nickname Fat Gloria. I have never attempted to actually fit the dress cover partially because time and an assistant is needed and also because I was never really able to get the cover on her, unaltered, in the first place.

I have since lost the fitting instructions but I called Atlanta Thread where I originally bought Gloria from and asked if it was possible for them to send me another instruction sheet. So one should be on it was to me shortly. And then we will see what happens. I know some of the corset makers have taken an electric knife to the foam body to reduce the waist more. Any sculptors out there who want to assist me with this project???

4 comments:

Linor said...

poor Gloria, always has her tush hanging out because she can't zip down her dress. That's a cool idea, if it actually was usable, but it seems like you'd need 5 of Gloria's sisters for it to be useful to produce dresses for different people.

amy said...

Linor, If people are about the same size you can buy one foam body and extra dresses and have a dress to fit each person you sew for. Or you could set the dress to and industry standard sample size to check fit on a body and then just grade the patterns for other standard sizes. it could work.

Summer said...

I bought one of these because my weight fluctuates a lot and I'm long waisted. Once I got the cover on it works pretty well. I'm in the same position as you--should have bought the petite form :/

Monet said...

I've heard of some people doing CRAZY things to these forms to get them to work. I'll keep you posted on my progress and let you know if I actually get one! I am increasingly afraid of them because people seem to have such a tough time making them work, and I'm just not prepared to take an electric knife to something I bought, you know?