Ajay the tailor speaks about the flower girl dresses

[Orangefir]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11620179/Tailor-centre-Meghan-Kates-bridesmaid-dress-row-speaks-out.html

No surprises here. Days before the wedding the dresses didn’t fit. Couture gowns, made by Givenchy from measurements sent in. This tailor worked day and night but they had all six dresses to fix. It’s obvious they couldn’t get it all done. They really needed remade.

I think we can see why Kate was upset and why Charlottes dress and some of the other younger flower girls dresses looked awful.

Such confident opinions on the thread from people who have never picked up a needle in their lives. I have had dresses made throughout my life and many were in exactly the same style as this one (which wasn't always fashionable).

A minimalist silk dress is the worst choice for a small child so the choice shows a lack of knowledge/experience on M's part. If the dresses aren't properly made (which they obviously weren't according to the tailor), then you cannot successfully alter them (which was also evident). The suggestion of making them again was correct (Except when it is a battle of wills, then the adaptations may still be pursued, as they were here).

I agree, combine that silk with the simple bodice style (so limited alteration point) and it being a small child's dress (so limited space in which to alter) it becomes a total nightmare.

The seams of minimalist silk dresses will always be a problem with active, fidgety infants. The silk can easily be pulled and undo very easily. We have all been that kid who discovers a gap in the seam and pulls and pulls until a large section of the garment is destroyed and the whole thing is unwearable. It only takes ten minutes of having to sit through a long, boring wedding.
I bet that Givenchy advised against it but were pressured into producing something so did a half-hearted job. She would have been told that they needed professional tweaking (and they probably pointed out why it would not work). She probably told them to make the dresses in standard sizing anyway.

Only reason tailor said anything is clearly to defend himself from such ludicrous accusations.

6 dresses needed massive alternations very late in the day - they worked flat out and did such a good job on the day no-one really noticed or said anything.

People I know did notice fit on Meghan dress wasn't great - and I've seen many comments around this since - she still looked good though.

Why people are still trying to blame Kate, 3 weeks post birth, for point out the issue - and the tailor who clearly worked flat out to fix the errors with not just one but 6 dresses is beyond me. If after so much work they still aren't perfect to me it suggest Kate was right and ideally they needed re-making.

The dresses should never have been so bad - why fitting weren't done mock ups made and all well before the wedding date - is just plain odd.

I actually find it really reassuring that they had last minute f**k ups like this. Perhaps they're not as different from the rest of us as they seem! And not at all strange that both women were a bit short-tempered about it. I would hardly call it an 'altercation', let alone a fight. I think Kate went way beyond by calling round with flowers and apologising the next day.

She possibly had a baby hanging of her boob or dealing with her other 2 children when she sent the OK, give the woman a break.

As said before, we do not know what was actualy said. Were they texts?
I thought Meghan said that they had not kept texts.
Or was it paraphrasing from conversations over the phone?
Either way, it is nearly 5 years ago.
Msgs or Texts (or emails) are very difficult to get the tone right.
It sounded urgent ehough for a phone call to be honest.
What we all now know is that Ajay reworked all 6 flowergirl dresses, with very short notice, and were working till the early hours of the morning. (From what he has said).
Frankly, that's enough to make not only Meghan and Kate to cry, but all the other mothers as well!
I am still glad I refused a big wedding for myself.

As has been said before the ‘texts’ where generated by the daily mail, interpreting a passage in a book about a conversation, written by a ghost writing, interpreting what he was told by Harry, who retold a conversation reported by Meghan five years previously, that was presented to make Harry and Meghan look good.

I’ll admit it, I’m far more interested in the sewing than the tiff between SILs which seems pretty minor to me.

I think resewing the dresses would be easier and quicker than altering them. I reckon a skilled seamstress could knock one out in about 6 hours, if the patterns were correct and didn’t need adjustments. How small is Givenchy’s atelier? Two or three people on the job could have knocked it out. The dresses were very simple.

Finally, there are a lot of different kinds of silk. These dresses aren’t silk charmeuse or chiffon. It looks more like silk gazar or maybe duchess satin. (Just looked it up dresses were silk radzimir which is not far off gazar.) This is not a difficult weave to work with.

The real scandsl is Givenchy’s atelier. How did they get it so wrong? Why did they not fix it?

I've never worked with that specific fabric but I'm inclined to agree, I think making new ones would have been better.

But if this thread shows anything it's that the idea that remaking could be easier is pretty counterintuitive to people who don't have experience of sewing. So perhaps that was part of the issue - it just sounded ridiculous to Meghan because she didn't know any better. And they wouldn't have been Givenchy dresses any more

That sounds about right @StatisticallyChallenged

But if this thread shows anything it's that the idea that remaking could be easier is pretty counterintuitive to people who don't have experience of sewing. So perhaps that was part of the issue - it just sounded ridiculous to Meghan because she didn't know any better. And they wouldn't have been Givenchy dresses any more

Yes, I agree - there’ s clearly a gulf of understanding at play here. If you wanted to use six crystal wineglasses for a formal dinner party and discovered beforehand that they were badly cracked, everyone would understand that the solution is to replace them, because we all have personal experience that even if they could be repaired, they’d still not be right. But not many people sew any more, and so can’t appreciate the same analogy can be true here.

I also agree making new ones would have been more straightforward. Alterations have their limits. I imagine that another issue might have been the couture aspect, if they were all hand sewn, like the wedding dress, then perhaps the tailor and his team had to hand sew all the alterations. Nobody looking at the bridesmaids would have been able to tell the difference, so machine sewing a new dress for each bridesmaid would have been the best way to get a really good fit.
Catherine and Pippa both had bridesmaids who looked lovely in dresses that fitted well. Dressing children is a really different expertise, and it would have been much more sensible to get the bridesmaids dresses made in London by a children’s designer.

I agree. I put an older baby in a white, silk dress once and the stains never came off. The original request showed a lack of judgment.

Not sure about Pippa but that's what Kate did with her BM/Flowergirl dresses - they were made by a children's dress designer/maker

www.nickimacfarlane.com/general/royal-bridesmaid-dresses-designer-announced/

I imagine that when ‘off duty’ they are probably just guarded around new people. This was just a new girlfriend at this point that they had no way of knowing whether or not there would be stories sold etc.

Sounds like you have some inside scoop. Is that why Meghan was so awful to Charlotte, too?

And we have yet another account to add to the mix - extract from an article in the Telegraph claiming that there were big problems with the dresses delivered by Givenchy, the other mothers were upset about them too, and Meghan complained to Givenchy. When Kate went round to see Meghan to try and sort it out, Kate left the meeting in tears.

(the story that just won’t die…..even if this is true, I have no doubt Meghan would also have been upset by it too, as no-one needs this stress given everything else going on)

I actually don't think he's done Meghan and favours rehashing this again. There's too many versions, too many staff who saw things. It's just made it murkier

Violet = Violet von westenholz

What's it matter if the bridemaids dresses got stained?
As long as the kids didn't eat in them prior to the wedding what happened after the wedding didn't really matter, they were hardly going to get a second outing

This picture may help non-sewers to understand why a dress that is seriously too big cannot be successfully taken in.

This image shows how a pattern would have to be altered to make it smaller. For a dress that is already made, you cannot alter it to raise the armscye because that fabric is missing.

Dresses of this style must fit correctly on the shoulders and armscyes (armholes) to look good.

You can raise a hem. You can nip in a waist. It is very difficult , if not impossible, to fix shoulders snd armscyes because the fabric to do so isn’t there.

This is why posters with sewing experience are saying it would be easier to start all over.