Recently I ordered a dress form from The Shop Company. It was difficult deciding what size to get because I sew for multiple people- myself, my daughter, and some family and friends. The Shop Company offers the Fabulous Fit padding system as an add on to their dress form. I’ve heard of this padding system before, but I never thought much of it. Although I prefer to primarily fit on an actual body, it’s still good to have a dress form in your size. I decided to order a size 12 (my daughter’s size) and go with the Fabulous Fit Dress Form system so I can size up for myself when needed.
If you are dress form shopping you can read my review on The Shop Company Dress Form. In this post, I’ll share my review of the Fabulous Fit Dress Form Fitting System.
Ordering
As I mentioned, this was an add on for the dress form I purchased. On the dress form page there isn’t much info but the Fabulous Fit padding system has its own product page which goes over everything in detail. There’s photos and a lot detail about what you get. The ordering process was easy and I received all my normal emails confirming my order and shipping.
I did have some minor issues. First, The Shop Company has a $10 off pop up if you add your email. I did, but I never received an email with the discount code. I was a little annoyed, but I didn’t contact the company about it and I just went ahead and ordered.
Second, I was sent the wrong cover for my Fabulous Fit system so I did have to reach out to customer service. There is a number, but I couldn’t get to a person so I had to email. It took two emails to have the correct cover sent. In the first email, I was told it would be sent. I never received a tracking email so I followed up, and was told the same thing, but this time they did actually send it. It was sent USPS Priority Mail and arrived fairly quickly. I was a little disappointed by this. I’ve owned a business before and I’ve worked customer service. If you send someone the wrong thing, you should take care of it immediately and ship quickly. But in the end, I received the correct cover.
What you get
The system comes with:
- 2 shoulder pads
- 2 bust pads
- 4 medium oval pads
- 2 larger medium oval pads
- 3 large oval pads
- 4 small filler pads
- Knit Cover
- Drawstring Bag for storage
Sizing is based on the size after adding your pads. The sizing is: Small is for 0-4, Medium for 6-10, Large for 12-16 and XL for 18 and 20. I went with size Large.
How does it work
To use the system, you first cover your dress form with the knit cover. The knit cover is great because its thin and tight enough to seamlessly hold all the pads in place. You can then, place your pads where you want. It takes a little playing around to figure out how to place the pads, but its pretty intuitive.
First off, I want to make it clear that I really like this system. According to the description, these pads allows you to size up your dress form. I don’t think that’s accurate, though. There’s not really enough pads to size up your dress form and I don’t know if this is the best way to go about that. But what is genius about this is that is allows you to more accurately reproduce a real body on the dress form. Dress forms are “standard size,” but our bodies never are.
The pads in this system are curved and contoured which mirrors how a real body is shaped. You can add these to your dress form to do things like add a bust size (or a few sizes with the filler pads), lower the bust, full abdomen (ie the “pooch”), a full back, full hips, and much more. You can use filler pads or even layer pads to make an area fuller. Another nice bonus is that its soft like a body. One of the reasons I don’t fit on a dress form is because the softness of a body makes a difference, and this is much more accurate in reflecting that.
Overall, I still prefer to fit on a real body, but this makes your dress form much more accurate and easier to use. I can check my style lines and get a much more accurate fit on my dress form. Plus when I take photos, my dress form looks more like me.
Here’s how my dress form looks padded out to fit my body better. I added a lot to the bust, I padded the back, butt, hips and pooch. I’m still a bigger size, but this looks more like me than any dress form ever has.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I really like the Fabulous Fit dress form fitting system and I recommend it. I don’t believe it’s the best way to size up your dress form, but it’s a great tool to make your dress form more accurately reflect your body’s real life curves and deviations. It extends the usefulness of your dress form and can be an essential tool to help with fitting and designing on your dress form.