Dress-forms

Dressforms and dummys are mainly used by professional designers in the fashion industry and by tailors, both professional and private. By using a dress form, tailors and fashion designers are able to create customized made to measure or tailor-made clothing without the need to take the measurements of the customers several times. Because of their close relation to the fashion industry, dress forms are a good choice if interesting elements are needed for display windows or for presenting apparel.

Dress forms usually consist of a torso attached to a solid footing, often made out of wood or metal. Most dress forms are vertically adjustable to make working on the torso easier. The torso, also called corpus, is almost everytime made out of polyurethane or plastic, which is covered with a special fabric on the outside. Anyone intending to buy a dressform for tailoring purposes is well advised to not choose one where the torso is made out of polystyrene. Particulary in those cases where needles are used often to fasten apparel, the durability of these torsos is reduced considerably.

There are two different kinds of dress-forms: adjustable and non-adjustable dress forms. Non adjustable dress forms are made from one piece and can be used properly only for one dress size. The more expensive, adjustable dress forms are able to cope with different dress sizes, as the torso can be adjusted to the needed size mechanically. Typically, fashion designers prefer the superior, but more expensive adjustable dressforms as they are able to setup the measurements of customers that way. With some dressforms, even the usage of non standard measurements is possible. Adjustable dressforms come in different sizes, providing the user with several options in regard to size, hip size and waist size. The corpus can be set to the proportions of a person by means of a thread rod; that is how made to measure clothing of high quality is created.

To cater for the difference in body proportions between males and females, there are male dress forms and female dress forms. Also, dress forms are available in children sizes. Those who may be planning to tailor an evening dress, a fancy costume or a well-fitting suit, buying one of these high-quality dress forms might be worth considering. Dummies are not only to be used in the process of designing fashion items, but also these dress forms are used by some to give shopping windows a special touch. Disused dressing forms can be used both as an eye-catcher in home furnishings, as well as for the storage of clothes.