What Katy Did Next

The 'Olive' steam punk hair piece.

Our tweed dress with the 'Queenie' large fascinator hat

Our Harris Tweed princess coat.

Our black lace cocktail dress worn with black lace bunny ears and the 'Lena' petite hairpiece

Our mint silk taffeta cocktail dress available made to order.

Our Floral bodice with the gorgeous grey underskirt from Doris Designs and the pink shoe clips!

Our Mint Silk taffeta cocktail dress worn with the Julia hair piece

'Alice' wearing our blue velvet princess coat and tweed dress with the Amelia beaded head band.

 We recently lent out our dresses to the wonderful and super talented Katy from What Katy Did Next for a shoot all the way up North. Once I had viewed Katy's work I was more than excited to have my dresses shot with her beautiful accessories and completely trusted that what she was going to do, would be fabulous. The shoot revolved around the theme of Alice in Wonderland, with the two stunning models playing the parts of Alice and the White Rabbit.
Sally Thurrell photographed Katy's 2012 collection which is made up of the prettiest accessories that you could wear to any occasion as well as for a wedding. My favourite has to be the Florence below, I love the pale blue, feathers, lace and the fact that it is a giant super gorgeous bow!

The Florence hair bow

HUGE THANK YOU'S TO KATY FOR ORGANISING THIS FANTASTIC SHOOT! 

Accessories: What Katy Did Next
Bunny Ears: Talulah Blue (we love these so much!)
Underskirts: Doris Designs 
Photographer: Sally Thurrell
Styled by: Katy Howieson and The Whistling Bunting Travelling Tea Party
Hair and Make Up: Beautiful bride makeovers
Models: Katy Marie Clarke and Nathalie Johnston aka Lily La Rousse


 Business Note ....

We have quite a few requests for dresses to be borrowed for photo shoots and as all you indie designers know, it can be a little bit of a hit or miss thing to do. Firstly you have to pack up all your garments and have them couriered to the shoot, trust that the stylists know what they are doing and in some cases after all the expense and risk of sending out your samples they don't even get used!
A few things I have learnt so far about lending out samples is ......

-check out the people organising the shoot thoroughly along with the other designers involved. If you don't like what they do just say no.

-Insist that they send you at least a few shots of your garments being used even if they don't make the final cut as this will pay for your efforts of sending your garments to them for free. If they don't use them they need to pay you.

-get insurance, if all your samples go missing or come back in a mess you would be devastated

-use wardrobe boxes, it's so much easier.

- give clear instructions of how you would like your garments to be shot and what can and can't be done with your garments. If necessary send clips and pins as there is nothing worse than getting photos back to see your designs not fitting right.

- organise the courier to return your garments yourself so they are not hanging around too long.

- be grateful that you have been asked, when it works well all the people involved get something great including you, so most of the time it is definitely worth all the effort. Especially when you get great shots of your work like the ones above. Remember the people orgaizing ther shoot are doing most of the work xxx

Looking back at 2011 ...

I said to myself at the beginning of 2011:  if I don't make a go of this by Christmas, I will go out and get a 'proper' job and give up this idea of being a designer running my own label. Things were getting tough and I hadn't really worked out what I was doing clearly, along with taking some business advice that meant changing the plan a quite dramatically.

This last year has been the one to define what we do (there's still quite a bit to go).

I'm just like most of my lovely customers when choosing a dress, I wanted to do everything, and design every dress imaginable, but after this year I am beginning to get a sense of myself and my brand to start working on fully next year. It's very exciting!

It's definitely been a roller coaster (I'm going to try and not be one of those people who talk in metaphors when it comes to business!) emotionally and accounts wise. There were scarily quiet times and then crazy busy times which I suppose are all part of running your own business. The skill is going to be in planning for this and making sure everything runs smoothly throughout each of these times.

There were a few tears, and many many smiles, my obsession with seams and old techniques really did pay off along with wanting to make each dress individually and with the best hand crafted techniques possible.

 Katie's dress has to be my dress of the year, it is the defining dress of my career so far and the dress that will always mark a point where I decided that using the best techniques will always be what my dresses are about, no cutting corners to cut prices. I was the dress that made me really beleive in what I was doing.

Anna encouraged me to take part in our first wedding fair which I had been strictly against, but I was proved wrong and it was a wonderful success and so much fun. We me so many lovely people.

I launched my first bridal collection, was on the radio and opened a boutique on Asos. We made some fabulous prom dresses for gorgeous girls and made two ready to wear collections that I will find hard to say goodbye too. I even braved the camera and in doing so learnt much more about how I want the dresses to feel and fit.

The Astor Dress from 2011 Bridal.

We have had the most wonderful brides and customers this year, each has worked with me to produce individual dresses that I have been so happy with! 

We worked on dresses for women all around the world and here at home, for their weddings and events. We met the wonderful Millie Moon and made the pink elephant dress and even made a dress for the fabulous RocknRoll Bride.

The prom dress became perfected, we made some amazing on off dresses and I even taught you how to make your own underskirts on RocknRoll bride.

It's been a really wonderful year and I can't wait to start back on Monday working on the new bridal collection, on Valentines brides dresses and meeting lots of lovely ladies January. Plus I have my first workshop at Millie Moon on the 22nd January in Wells.

HUGE thank you's to Anna for putting up with me crazy ramblings and making th dresses so perfect, Mum for all of the support and super hand sewing skills, Dad for drilling holes in my studio and for all the wise calming words and of course to Wing for helping me with the blog design, being so, so patient, for making me always try and look harder and for being the best husband ever, ever, ever!  

AND of course to all you incredible customers with wonderful visions and all the lovely people we have met this year including the beautiful models, bloggers, photographers and amazing people out there who do amazing, excellent quality work! THANK YOU AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Providing I don't get hit by a bus, it's going to be a fantastic and very exciting new year ahead in 2012!

P.S. I have too many dresses to work on next year now so I can't go out and get a proper job, looks like designing and running my own label will have to be my job :) xxx

A Dress for RocknRoll Bride

Today the dress I made for Kat at RocknRoll Bride arrived and I discovered something amazing that was right in front of me!

Betty's Good Tee Dress in Orgain Fair Trade Cotton

 Being mainly an online business I find many ways to promote my work via twitter, facebook and my blog. I have found some really cool people out there with similar businesses, ideas and styles that are  great to talk to and network work with. I am also really lucky to have a few local people (which is rare out in the countryside) that I can chat with about my work and their work.

What I didn't think of was how twitter could let me give really great interactive customer service.

I do a huge amount of communicating via email but just imagine being there when you open the box and try your dress on!

So when your order something and post on twitter, not only do you tell everyone else but the business who you purchased from can also be involved with your reactions and response to the product.

OK I know what you're thinking, WOAH THERE MR SUIT this is a blog about Alexandra King's pretty dresses not how to exploit customers!

For teeny tiny businesses like mine, how a customer feels about a dress I have sewn by hand is really important to me, I want then to love it as much as I do and understand that what they are buying is really special.

Today for the first time I could follow my customer (Kat) as her dress arrived and she tried it on.

This is great for me because

a) it's as close as I can get to a fitting from a distance, I can guide the customer how to put on the dress and hear how it fits etc.

and

b) it's like someone standing in the door of a shop and shouting to everyone on the street how they feel about my dress.

This could obviously go the wrong way too, if the customer isn't happy and not everyone wants to share everything on twitter, but it sure ups the customer service. It's silly that I hadn't thought of this before!

So ladies, if you order a dress and you are on twitter I would love for you to tweet or message me when your dress arrives and when you have tried it on. It means I can be there to answer any questions straight away. Or give me an old fashioned phone call!  Follow me on twitter @makemeadress.

Today I learnt just how amazing hearing from customers in real time can be. (And I eventually photographed the ivory underskirt, so pretty!)