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23 October 2008
Fashion advice, please! I ordered this dress, which is totally cute, but the top is really gappy. I would prefer not to wear anything underneath it, but is this something that a tailor could fix, or I could do a quick-fix on?
At least I hope a tailor can fix that issue lickity-split, because I need a similar fix done on the bridesmaid dress for my sister's wedding, and I'm going to put off doing it as long as possible.
I think it could be fixed. Sometimes they pinch the top at the shoulders to take out excess fabric that is gaping. If that isn't the problem, it looks like those soft folds/pleats at the bust could be slightly more gathered to take out excess fabric without altering the appearance of the dress.
More that it falls open. The shoulders and back fit, it's just that the dress seems to want me to have either much smaller boobs so that the fabric would be lying flat and not gaping, or much larger boobs so that I'd be filling it out more and it wouldn't be gaping.
No plans on changing the boobs in the near future, so I'm hoping I can change the dress. :-)
The issue is that it's a lot of drapey-ish fabric. If I pinch the straps by the armpit so that the fabric is gathered more, it looks better (though the resulting sweetheart neckline doesn't quite fit with the dress!).
Have you tried it on with different types of bras on underneath? (Yes, I just ignored the bit about you not wanting to wear anything under it...but but but this might be the cheapest fix! Especially if you have a slightly padded seamless bra or suchlike.)
Heh, yes, I did not mean to exclude bras! And I think a more push-up-y one would help, but the dress actually gaps down toward the bodice line (?), so that the bra becomes visible. Which is not so good.
Hopefully the tailor can get it to lie flat. It sounds like your bust might be too full for the dress. Maybe he can pinch a little dart at the armpit to give it more shaping. An extra dart on a solid color might not be what you want, but it probably won't be that noticeable to the average Jane. I would definitely bring it in and see what they say. I'm sure they have better solutions. Good luck, occhiblu.
I second Hollywood Tape, that stuff is a godsend! I had a severely "gappy" dress that I wore to a friends wedding this summer. That stuff held it all together for 10 hours in the SoCal heat.
You can get it at most fabric stores where the glue etc is.
Yeah, I'm not sure a tailor can do much in the way of "stop-gap measures" with that kind of garment. Tape seems like the solution.
I also love deep-V wraparounds, but I can rarely find one that doesn't want to open right up in the front on me. It is a tricky thing to engineer, and they seem made for women whose boobs can either hold their own or mind their own business. There needs to be some means of securing the overlap. I often use those tiny dressmaker safety pins on the inside placket where it doesn't show.
it's such a cute dress. i'm going to second the tailor advice. for about $15 they can make it fit perfectly to you and totally worth it considering what you saved on the dress with the sale.