Creating a Wedding Dress Collection

An insider’s look at the creation of a wedding dress collection.

This post was updated as of March 30, 2021.

When it comes to creating a wedding dress collection, it can often feel like a race. The inspiration can be seen as the warm up. That’s when you “stretch” the mind and getting the creative juices flowing. The actual sketching is like the race prep. Getting all your ideas together and ready to go. Once the sketches go through the round of cuts, and the final ones are decided on, the starting bell rings. The race to the finish starts!

Wedding Dress Collection Race Start

The start of the race begins with creating muslins. Muslins are a prototype of the design made in cheap fabric. They’re used to give an as close to exact an idea of what the final dress will look like on a bride.

Before a muslin goes on a body, a preliminary review happens. Each muslin is looked over, questions are written for review during the fitting, and notes are made. Sometimes things change, or get mixed up, or even don’t translate as well from concept to paper to three dimensions as one would hope for.

Muslin Fitting Day

Fitting day!!! A wonderful, busy, fun, and very tiring day! The fit model arrives and muslins go on almost immediately. The most important thing about fitting day is to get as much information as you can.  Each muslin fitting typically runs a little like this:

1. Model puts muslin dress on (with help)
2. Pin any obvious gaps or bagginess
3. Step back and take the entire dress in – going back in to pin some more if needed
4. Review questions from the notes and try to problem solve as much as possible
5. Circle the dress some more to find any remaining problems
6. Take pictures from the front, side, and back to reference later
7. On to the next dress!

This is all done to try and solve any potential problems and to determine appropriate sewing techniques. It’s a frenetic atmosphere, but it’s worthwhile in the end.

A muslin fitting day takes several hours depending on the number of muslins. But even after the model leaves, the day is not done. Each style is reviewed again, and potential final fabric options are considered.

The Wedding Dress Collection Finish Line

Although the muslin fitting is complete, the race isn’t quite done. The wedding dress collection finish line still lies ahead. This means the muslins must be turned into the final production samples so that they can be photographed. At that point, the finish line is in sight: debuting the collection at fall market.

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