Inside the Modern Era of Custom Shopping in New York, as Designers Get Close to Couture

The morning before New York Fashion Week, House of Gilles invited VIP guests to stop by the Samuel B. & David Rose Building penthouse. Cherry blossoms scented the relaxed presentation space, where a fleet of couture gowns on dress forms were displayed. In contrast to the usual fashion week spectacle, the room was calm, quiet and discreet, reflecting the appeal that former J. Mendel designer Gilles Mendel has found by pivoting his design focus to custom.

“Chloe and I are having a lot of fun. We’re making this new little world in our atelier. We provide something very personal to our clients,” said Mendel, discussing the company alongside his daughter Chloe Mendel Corgan, whose custom wedding gown designed by Mendel kicked off the new business direction.

“We started offering it to people, and it kind of snowballed into something where we had to take it seriously,” said Mendel, adding that they’ve been very busy since launching last year, despite keeping the business low-key and relatively private. They’ve since expanded with a newly launched customizable made-to-order collection.

“When I do a fitting, the dress is going to be impeccable,” said Mendel, who employs a team that includes artisans with Paris couture experience. “We construct the form in the studio to your exact measurements. It’s very, very special.”

Yes, Paris has ownership over haute couture — but in New York, designers have also long been crafting a luxury made-to-measure experience for their customers. Charles James, often described as the only true American couturier, influenced a generation of European designers including Christian Dior, Halston, Schiaparelli and Yves Saint Laurent. Bill Blass, alongside preeminent American designers Oscar de la Renta and Geoffrey Beene, raised the profile of American designers in the 70s through couture designs for high-profile clients including Nancy Reagan and members of New York society.

Building off their core ready-to-wear businesses, today’s designers continue to field special requests ranging from customized tweaks to bespoke. And while celebrities often wear custom looks for well-documented events like red carpet premieres, many special-order clients remain under the radar. 

“I’ll call this a junior version of Paris haute couture,” said Dennis Basso.

Custom has been a mainstay for the designer ever since he launched his label in 1983, and represents about 20 percent of his overall business, with customized requests representing close to 40 percent. “The client who is customizing a dress or a gown, she’s also fitting all of her clothes. It’s a certain individual; she wants her dress length always the same, for that perfection. She’s totally aware of what it entails and what needs to be done to get it done.”

What the process entails: time and a flexible budget. The timeline for completion can range from several weeks to several months, depending on the complexity and level of customization, as well as the designer’s own availability and logistics.

“We have the capability that if someone falls in love with something that I’ve designed, but she’d really like it to be a little higher in the back or to make some changes, we absolutely can do that — and do it also in a timely manner,” Basso said. His label is produced locally, based out of his 36,000-square-foot design and production studio in Long Island City.

Where There’s Wealth, There’s Demand

While the New York metro area is the dominant market for bespoke Stateside, designers field requests from cities around the country — Palm Beach, Fla., and Dallas are major markets — as well as internationally: wherever there’s wealth, there’s demand. 

Outside of New York, trunk shows offer an opportunity to connect with new customers in other geographic markets and begin the customization conversation.

“I like to say when I’m at a trunk show or meeting with clients, ‘everything is possible,’” said designer Bach Mai. “The collection is just a starting point. It’s a suggestion,” he added. “What can we do to create something that will make you feel the most amazing?”

Kaleta Blaffer Johnson, who’s based in Dallas and sits on the board of several art nonprofits, has the honor of having worn Bach Mai’s first custom dress. The pair, who are childhood friends, met as high school lab partners at St. John’s School in Houston. Mai made her a dress to wear to a cotillion dance — and years later, designed a “redo” dress for her when Johnson was co-chairing the 2019 Dallas Contemporary gala. The custom dress was inspired by the museum’s Mario Sorrenti exhibition, which featured a series of photos of Kate Moss.

“[Mai] was still living in Paris at the time, so we did all of our fittings via Zoom. He would tell me where to hold the measuring tape and everything,” Johnson said of the silver velvet silk dress, constructed with fabric Mai sourced in Italy. She also wore a custom chartreuse gown by the designer for the Houston Grand Opera Ball, and plans to wear another look for the next Dallas Contemporary gala this fall. “People came up to me and they were like, ‘are you wearing Bach Mai?’” she said. “People recognize it because he has a big following in Houston.”

Bringing the “Couture Spirit” to New York

Mai, driven by a love of couture, moved to Paris after graduating from the design program at Parsons to work with John Galliano at Maison Margiela. The personal nature of working with a client one-on-one is a draw for both customers and designers.

“We’re not a couture brand. I wish, I hope, one day — but couture-aspirational is what I like to say,” said Mai, who is inspired by the intimate relationship between client and designer that builds over time through the custom process.

Patternmaking is often the trickiest hurdle when moving from the category of customization to made-to-measure. For repeat clients, the patternmaking process can be streamlined using customized drape forms that allow a designer to drape and create while cutting down on the number of in-person fittings required.

“True couture garments are not symmetrical, because human bodies are not symmetrical,” Mai said. “Charles James used to create these form covers that would kind of mold to his client’s body proportions,” he added. “We try to infuse that couture spirit into the brand.”

For Adam Lippes, requests fall into three different camps: custom dresses for special events, custom colorways of existing designs, and gowns for bridesmaids and other family members. 

“I have a lot of customers who find a dress they like and want it in six colors, eight colors, that kind of thing,” said Lippes, who recently opened a new private salon in the Upper East Side to facilitate personal one-on-one shopping experiences. “We’re always looking at what’s new in fashion,” he added. “But the customer tends to want what she knows and what she likes and what she feels good in. So we’re able to do that for her to keep that same style alive for a long time.”

Made-to-measure orders are mostly handled through his in-house atelier. The lead time is generally six to eight months out, with multiple fittings throughout the process.

“There’s a lot of demand, but it’s a very small part of our overall business,” said Lippes, whose label also includes a made-to-order department that is booked out throughout the year. “Our clients want it. So if a good client wants it, it’s hard to say no.”

One of the biggest challenges? “Customers changing their mind,” Lippes said. “And one of the reasons these custom dresses are so expensive is because you give room for the changing of the mind and the personal time it takes. It’s not easy for a customer to always see a sketch and imagine themselves in that. They love it on paper; everything looks good on paper, but they can’t imagine themselves in it. So when they see it, it’s not what they thought it was — that can happen. And obviously our goal is to make them happy,” he added. “It takes months and it has to be right.”

House of Gilles uses Procreate to create digital mockups of what the final design will look like on that customer’s specific body. “My dad’s amazing at sketching directly on your body,” Mendel Corgan said. “The woman can actually envision what she’s going to look like. Or he might even take something unexpected, that she might not think looks good on her, but when she sees it, she’s like, ‘Wow — I never knew I could look like that.’”

The work flow of custom and made-to-measure projects isn’t a viable fit for every designers’ business model. It’s time and labor intensive, and difficult to scale. But can also be deeply rewarding. 

Last year, Mendel described the upside to WWD’s Rosemary Feitelberg. “These are really handmade clothes that are done with a lot of attention, love and care,” he said. “I enjoy this enormously. You can control the quality and make something extremely personal. It’s really a piece of art.”

The pricing of each design is impacted by the particulars — fabric, embellishments like beading, time frame, complexity — but custom requests tend to start in the mid-five figures, and range much higher depending on the designer. Customization (before a custom pattern enters the conversation) is a more cost-effective road for customers to achieve a one-of-a-kind look.

“I have a customer who always wants something from the runway, but they want it in their own color,” said Sergio Hudson. “That’s a big deal for some people, that anybody can’t walk out in what they’re wearing. They want it to be recognizable from the brand, but they want it to be theirs.”

Color requests make up the bulk of the requests that Hudson receives — and, on the spectrum of custom logistics, is a relatively easy variable to swap.

“When people come to us, they love the style of the collection. They just want it for them,” said Hudson, who has rooted all of his ready-to-wear collections in color. “And sometimes they might not like a neon yellow. They’re like, ‘Can you give me more of a canary yellow?’”

Because Hudson specializes in suiting, much of his requests fall into the realm of customization, and most of the designer’s custom work is limited to red carpet and one-off wedding dresses for friends (including content creator Megan Pinckney Rutherford, for her wedding to South Carolina Rep. J. Todd Rutherford). For made-to-measure — when patternmaking starts to enter the conversation — the process can take anywhere up to eight weeks. 

“The only time I turn down a request is if the time frame is just too short. A lot of times people call on Tuesday and say, ‘I need to wear this on Thursday.’ And sometimes we can do it, depending on our workload. A lot of times I’m like, ‘No, we just can’t do it.’ So that’s the only time we really turn it down.”

Hudson’s career took off with two very high-profile custom clients: former First Lady Michelle Obama and current vice president and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris. Obama wore a plum suit ensemble and matching coat for President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, and Harris wore a black tuxedo coat and sequin dress by the designer later that evening.

“[Custom requests] have been consistent since we started, I think because the brand really took off from that moment with Mrs. Obama at the inauguration,” Hudson said. “Everybody could tell that we custom made that for her, so people want that experience. That’s the biggest reward for me: to dress the most powerful women in the world and to dress people like my mother.”

Inga Beckham, Hudson’s business partner, estimates that custom requests represent 10 to 15 percent of their overall business, with the price point ranging from 30 to 60 percent over ready-to-wear retail. “Custom is definitely a very important part of our business,” she said. 

Beckham noted that while the accessibility of designers at smaller brands often lends itself to custom work compared to heritage brands, that accessibility can also sometimes be misconstrued.

“We’re right next to Schiaparelli in Bergdorf Goodman — but they would never ask Schiaparelli, because that’s a haute couture if you want something custom, and they know how much that’s going to cost,” Beckham said.

And for customers first venturing into the made-to-measure space, the pricing differential can be jarring.

“Especially if it’s a client that buys our ready-to-wear, you’re kind of stuck in the middle of trying to figure out how to tell them that, ‘Hey, I know what you saw is $4,800 — but right now, this dress is $15,000,’” she added. “A new pattern has to be made; we have fabric that we have to source, and we’re not going to get the pricing that we got on 30 units on one [unit].”

A Made-to-measure Brand

“It’s still such an abstract thing for people to know how the garment is made and what goes into it,” said One/Of designer Patricia Voto, who built her label concept on made to measure. “From the very beginning, people were confused coming in, like, ‘Wait, so I get to choose? You don’t have inventory. What is dead stock? What are these materials that I get to pick from?’”

Voto, who started her career working for Gabriela Hearst, Altuzarra and Brock Collection, describes One/Of as existing in the realm between ready-to-wear and couture. All of her pieces are made to measure and in extremely limited quantities, partially due to her usage of rare, vintage and dead stock fabric.

“We call all of our pieces suggestions, because they’re really just meant to be a conversation starter; get you engaged with the piece and figure out what you want to do with it,” said Voto, shortly after wrapping up a fitting with a client at her atelier-slash-showroom off Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side, where she and her team work one-on-one with customers. Fabric swatches line one wall, and her designs, which include shoes, are displayed throughout the intimate space. A space on another floor is dedicated to production, with a team of sewers working onsite.

“How many times do you go to the store and you’re like, ‘Oh, I love that top, but I don’t like that fabrication,’ or this color doesn’t suit me? And with the way that we work, it eliminates those questions and the hesitation to get something, because you get to pick and choose with us,” she added. 

Voto views made-to-measure as a sustainable and accessible alternative to mass-produced garments. Her price point for custom aligns with other luxury ready-to-wear-brands, and there are entry-level options, such as basic tops.

“I wanted to really be value-driven. We try to be really smart about how we adapt patterns, how we price things. We make a lot still in the Garment Center, and have amazing partners who support us,” Voto said. “Give clients what they want without having to charge really high premiums for it — I really want to be an answer to a lot of people [so] this becomes something that is second nature for them. Instead of going and shopping the whole avenue and not finding anything you like, let’s cut that out of the process. Let’s make it for you.”

The extent of One/Of’s marketing is through its social media account, and her business growth has been primarily driven by word-of-mouth — customers coming across a photo of one of her designs, which are also sold via wedding site Over the Moon, or through family or a friend. One/Of chief operating officer Ellie Philipps was one of those clients.

“Ellie came to us for a look, and then we did something for her mother and then we did something for her other sister,” Voto said. “And so it oftentimes ends up becoming a family affair. Even when we’re not doing bridal, friends will come in and be like, ‘Wait — this is fun. I get to pick, I get to choose, this is going to be made for me.’ I think a lot of people love the idea of one-of-a-kind, or knowing that there’s a small amount of people that have what they have. Which, to me, feels like true luxury.”