Why I Stopped Making Custom Bras.... or How Not to Let Others' Unrealistic Expectations Stop You » All bra adventures

Why I Stopped Making Custom Bras.... or How Not to Let Others' Unrealistic Expectations Stop You

In college, I made custom bras as my Honors Thesis Project. After college, I made a few custom bras for myself, and a few others for customers. I was pretty successful at producing great bras. I wasn't employed at the time, but married so I was fine income-wise, so I was able to figure out what I wanted to do with my BA in Apparel Design.... I definitely wanted to focus on custom garments. I toyed around with the idea of having an Etsy page, or my own website, but lack of business knowledge, depression, a whole lot of self-doubt and fear of inserting the "real world" and other issues lead to me never ever actually launching something. What I DID do was an internship with a custom corset maker, and my mentor was kind enough to introduce me to those who needed custom bras. (Wow, now I feel bad for not staying in contact.... >.< ) So I made custom bras by word-of-mouth.

Now I have a full-time job, and on the side I do private lessons and make custom garments (anything really, but with a focus on foundation garments like corsets and bras), but still, nothing "professional" or with an online presence. But I've taken a break from bra making. Why? After a disappointing fail about a year ago where I went through about $100 of supplies and ended up refunding the customer her deposit, I lost all my confidence and stopped.

This customer was IMPOSSIBLE to please, and after explaining to her that I just couldn't do it any more, she told me that she didn't think I was doing it for profit and more for practice and didn't get why I couldn't make "just one more" mock-up.... '-_- Since then, I've learned A LOT about contracts, and that I need to figure out the best suppliers for each specific bra making notion/fabric/material before I continue.

It's a lot of time, effort, and money figuring it all out! Unless you buy 1000 meters at a time, you can't pay wholesale price, and retail price is 3-4 times that so it's an expensive business. Not to mention the money you spend getting a degree/training, the value of time in doing countless hours of research, and then paying yourself a decent wage especially if you want to survive off of it (and more than just scrape by). I was trying to charge about $120 for a fully custom bra (I supply the support and fit and comfort, and she picks out color, style, details, etc. within the reasonable parameters. I draft the pattern completely from scratch, with guidance from a tutorial on Foundations Revealed, my own self-learned methods, and the plentiful bra fitting blogs and resources). This particularly high price also included me driving the 30+ minutes to and from her house for fittings, and after MANY mock-ups, and a PERFECT FINAL bra THAT SHE STILL DIDN'T LIKE, I refunded her the 50% deposit and moved on.

She was naturally extremely projected, omega shape, very narrow and short roots, even fullness, firm tissue, touching roots at sternum, narrow shoulders. Probably about a 75L in Ewa Michalak sizing. (Just wanted to add that I personally have nothing against her size or shape or those like hers; just trying to get across how difficult her shape was to manipulate with the bra and support with the given materials on the market with the limited experience that I had.) After lots of blood, sweat, and tears, the final bra fit perfectly!! Alas, it was so far outside of the smashed down shape she was used to (she was wearing a molded bra... enough said). Along the way she kept asking me to reduce the projection, and move the seams, and change the top neckline shape, and make it more plunge yet more coverage near the armpits, and she pointed out every tiny little wrinkle, and she wanted the back to have no elastic somehow magically because she hated any squishing and she wasn't used to the elastic so her skin was "irritated," and she wasn't used to proper underwires so they also "irritated," etc. etc. rant rant rant.... I accommodated as much as I could without it being damaging to her tissue and realistic for her shape, which I explained over and over that there are just LIMITS, but she wouldn't listen. She wanted something impossible.
*Rant over*

Anyway.... life is always a learning process, in every aspect, and we have to be able to deal with failure and accepting out mistakes. It was really hard for me to do, and I sadly haven't gotten back into it in a while. I've still worked on patterns for myself, but haven't sewn anything up in a while. I definitely want to get back into it!! I've written up some plans for bralette making classes, and breast-supporting pajama classes, and eventually would like to do custom corset and bra classes. But I already work a lot, and take care of the home (still working on it with hubby to balance better... *strained laughter*), and have mental and physical health issues of myself, I'm just always too damn tired to get anything really started!! If anyone wants me to make them something, like maybe more simple at first... maybe that will help, haha, I don't know...

I think the moral of this story was supposed to be not to let other people's unrealistic expectations stop you from doing what you love to do?? If YOU know what you're doing is great, and you've taken all the constructive criticism you can and applied it, and then even gave it to some unrealistic demands, and people STILL aren't happy.... then YOU are right. They're wrong. Suck it up, move on no matter HOW painful (telling her I just had to stop was one of THE MOST conflicting and difficult things I've ever had to do. I HATE admitting defeat), and find another project that gives the same happy and successful feedback that you put into it.

Thanks for listening. :3

Filed under Bras ups and downs

Shared on Nov 22, 2017 Flag this