Made From The Right Cloth - Part II

So yeah, I am now in the market for a good jacket. I did have an initial discussion with the dress’ design house regarding the possibility of them making the jacket. I made the mistake of asking for their help however which was about as useless as having tits on a bull. If you tell them exactly what you want then they can be quite accommodating but if you ask for their assistance or their advice on what would be a suitable design, they sort of stare at you blankly and ask “well what do you want?”. I am perhaps being a little unfair though as the girl who was discussing the jacket with The Boy and I was quite nice and she was at least trying to help. I was just a little frustrated by the whole thing.

I am not a designer myself. I will confess to usually knowing what looks alright once I see it on but apart from that, I am by no means an authority on fashion. I also haven’t got a scrapbook full of pictures and designs to act as the cornerstone of any negotiations. I don’t know what I want. We’ve been through this before. This is why I am not confident about suggesting something because I am pretty sure that it may not be the best thing at all but that someone is just going to go off and design exactly that regardless. I don’t want people to take the design away from me exactly but I would like some suggestions or perhaps some idea that they actually consider whatever guidelines I discuss. I’d like to believe they actually thought whatever was decided upon would actually be the best option and not merely the design the customer happened to request.

I ended up feeling a little guilty as well. I do say “ended up” feeling rather than “was made to feel” cause that wasn’t exactly the case but the end result was the same. Without a clear idea of how to move forward I felt like I was being difficult because I had walked in without knowing exactly what it was that I wanted. I felt like I was asking the girl to do something that wasn’t her job (despite the fact that I had made the appointment specifically to discuss the design of a tailored jacket). I also felt like I was wasting her time when I asked if I could go and try the dress on again, if I could look at other fabrics against the dress and just have a discussion with The Boy about general ideas rather than sitting down to put something to paper. We did get something in the end though. Which I may not use at all in the long run.

Of the other designers that I had been to see, there was one who I felt did actually understand the vague style ideas I had discussed (which is quite a feat really) and whose aesthetic sensibilities seemed to match my own. We had discussed the option of her designing me a bridal outfit before I saw The Dress. As a designer however, her mainstay is actually Jackets and not so much the dresses so I can actually still see myself in one of her creations. We just have to come to an agreement on the price and the work. And of course I have to stop feeling guilty that I decided not to go with her design for a dress but would still like her to design the jacket. Stupid perhaps as I’m a paying customer but there you go.