Behind The Scenes: Upgrading Outfit Design & Fabrics
As mentioned in my previous 'Behind The Scenes' post which I spoke about why and how we upgraded the doll body fabrics, when I began the Outfit Design & Fabrics process of our dolls I tried to do it in an inexpensive way as possible. This is because I was creating six dolls at the same time, the minimum order requirements were high, I didn't have much of a following at the time, and I nearly all of my income during the pandemic. I had very little experience in design or fashion so everything was new to me. I had to learn all about different fabric types, fabric construction, production methods - everything! It was so overwhelming.
But I was really passionate in trying to create these dolls so I went ahead with what I knew at the time anyway. Our doll manufacturer that we chose at the time was able to nearly create the vision we wanted for the dolls however after many revisions, it still wasn't quite right. I wasn't happy with the quality of the materials and the constructions of the dolls and the Outfit Design & Fabrics.
I then decided to contact several other manufacturers to help me finalize the doll design and polish them up. Something that I've realized over the last year speaking with my therapist is how I'm such a perfectionist (to a fault at times!) I think being a perfectionist can be really great in some things and is probably how I had gotten successful so quickly when I swerved into the world of wedding photography after being in the financial industry for over a decade. But I can really agonize over small details for a long time. This is great for creating the best designs, however not for getting things out in a hurry.
Luckily, our new manufacturing partner is as of a perfectionist as I am so we really connected over fixing some of the quality issues I had with the dolls at the time. They worked like crazy with me every day to go over so many fine details including upgrading the fabric materials. Most of the fabrics were kept the same, just was able to obtain higher quality.
Just like you can see above with our Chinese cheongsam/qi pao and Japanese yukata kimono. The top fabric was the original one and the bottom one was the better one we recently sourced. It is thicker and has brighter and vibrant colours. We also made both the Yukata kimono and cheongsam/qi pao removable in the front.
We went to different sources to get higher quality satin for the doll outfit fabrics to improve the durability and feel of each of the dolls. We decided to use the brocade fabric for a more traditional Korean look.
We improved the Korean Hanbok skirt shape to be more A-Line and bigger, and custom printed the sleeves on a higher quality fabric as well. We upgraded the torso section of the jeogori material too.
For the Vietnamese ao dai, we switched the fabric to a beautiful rich red satin instead of the thin polycotton we had previously. In doing so, we also fixed the shape of the dress and upgraded the way we added the gold floral design. We previously had the design printed and now opted to have it embroidered instead. This made the doll look so much more elegant.
We also upgraded the pants material too. The first fabric was of a really cheap quality and easily creased. The new one is more a golden yellow and closer to the colour of the flowers. We also tried to make it a very wide leg like they are traditionally but it was very difficult since the legs are so long and skinny.
Getting the Filipina dress was incredibly hard to do! Because of the rag doll’s wide hips, it was hard to get a specific shape for the dress. We wanted to do a mermaid like shape with a slight trumpet bottom, however we couldn’t get the dress to hug the hips without having it look frumpy around the midsection. As such, we created a more flatting A-Line dress.
Getting the sleeves right and making it really big was another difficult process. The original sleeves we had on the doll was more like a puff sleeve with gathers on the bottom where the armhole is. However, we learned it wasn’t a true traditional Filipiniana sleeve, and should be wide and open at the bottom. So we had to in and redo the sleeves once again like a true Filipiniana sleeve.
But this is where we ran into problems once again. This new traditional sleeve took a REALLY long time to make which made the doll really costly. So we had to opt for less pleats but unfortunately it meant the sleeve was not as big as we wanted it to be. We had to balance between cost and the look and I think we got something in between. What we achieved is still was really beautiful and symbolic to the Filipiniana dress!
We also improved the Japanese yukata kimono from our current version and played aorund with different trims. The yukata usually has the same fabric for the collar but we found that it looked more finished with the red collar trim. We improved the neck area, fixed the obi and the shape of the yukata.
We’ll continue to update you with more Behind The Scenes posts soon! Thank you for reading about our journey in creating our diverse Asian dolls.