Women with different body types try an $80 custom dress service
Much like services that offer custom-fitted suits, eShakti sells custom-fitted dresses. Customers choose a dress online, submit their measurements, and get a tailored dress sent to their door. To even better suit their style, customers choose from a variety of necklines, sleeve lengths, and skirt lengths. Dresses range from $30-$150, but we kept our budget to $80. Following is a transcript of the video.
Emma Fierberg: I feel like it's a pretty average shape for American women and for some reason, there aren't dresses made for this body.
Narrator: Dresses can be hard to shop for. They're often supposed to hug your waist, leave room for your hips, fit around your chest and fall to just the right length. But every body is different. And it's hard to find a dress that fits just right.
Fierberg: When I shop for regular clothes I'm usually a small or medium top and then a large or extra large bottom. I'm not one uniform size. So shopping for a dress becomes that much harder.
Jacqui Frank: It's like I really need a dress for a wedding. And everything I try on is too long. It looks like I'm drowning in fabric or it doesn't fit right. It just, whatever proportions I have and whatever proportions they make dresses in don't line up.
Herrine Ro: My biggest difficulty is actually finding maxi dresses. Because of my height a lot of the times dresses are way too long for me and then I have to add on the hemming cost on top of the dresses.
Narrator: eShakti sells custom-fitted dresses based on your measurements. You can also choose from a variety of customizations like sleeve type, neckline, and skirt length. Our volunteers all picked dresses they liked. Put in their measurements and in a few weeks the dresses arrived.
Ro: I was expecting it to be more billowy.
Fierberg: Ooh it's like a silky material.
Frank: It feels very peasanty which I don't think I was expecting.
Fierberg: Question is, is this gonna fit on my body?
Frank: Renaissance milk maid. So I picked this dress because I liked the pattern and the fabric that it was made of. And for the neckline it had two options, it had what was just a square I think and a high square. And this neckline for me feels still like it's a, I guess a lower square rather than a high square. If so it is not high enough for me to like go about my every day life. It's still very comfortable though. But it's a little too roomy I think in certain areas up top.
Fierberg: I'm stoked that I put this on my body and it zipped like I was able to zip it myself, and it actually fits. So that's exciting, I can like move my arms, I can breathe. So it's not too tight. That's a relief. That being said I think the waist is a little bit higher than I wanted it to be. It's like hitting right in this area and I think it's supposed to be like here. So it's just like a couple inches too high. The sleeves are a little looser than I thought they should be. Like it looks like two of my arms could fit in here.
Ro: The natural waistline I feel like is probably an inch to an inch and a half too wide. If I were to put my satisfaction on a scale of one to 10 I would probably put it at like a 7.5. I could go down the street wearing this and feel good about myself.
Narrator: The dresses didn't quite fit perfectly but it's possible that some of the measurements were off. Next time we'll go to a tailor to get professionally measured.
Frank: So I have four or five dresses from eShakti that I have ordered and really like. And what I normally do is just order my size and tell them my height. And those dresses always look great. And I wear them all the time.