Comments on: Japanese dress forms

By: Lia

Lia — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:35:05 +0000

Hi, I’m a fashion design student in Ireland and I have been looking desperately for a quarter sized form! Have any of you successfully bought one? Can anyone help me get one? Any advice or information would be appreciated, Thanks.

By: Asinknits

Asinknits — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 06:36:43 +0000

The revised dress form also has a swayback.

I recently went shopping for jeans, and every pair of jeans I tried on assumed I didn’t have much of a back curve/swayback. I ended up buying the pair that had the smallest gaping at the back. There may be a lot more to the constant issue of back gaping in pants, but I can’t help but wonder if poor dress forms without the back curves natural to humans could be part of this.

By: Kathleen Fasanella

Kathleen Fasanella — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:29:32 +0000

It's Einfuhrung in die Schnittlehre by Jaumann, mentioned previously in my favorite pattern drafting books.

By: zoe

zoe — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:03:54 +0000

wow… that german draft is really awesome…. which book is it from??

By: Amber

Amber — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:35:46 +0000

Wow, that’s interesting, I made a dress form of myself from masking tape with a friend and the arm hole is exactly that triangular shape. I just sort of felt it must be a little screwed up. And since it doesn’t have real armplates I had to just sort of draw one on, and it follows that triagular contour. I don’t know how to draft well for this shape.

By: Sandra B

Sandra B — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:08:08 +0000

My dressform looks more like the one on the left, but has the armplate of the one on the right. It was made by a local company that I used to work for (I just sewed the covers). The owners had no background whatsoever in the fashion industry, but the husband was a tinkerer. They started off mending display mannequins and reselling them, then the business grew. They developed their dressform from an American shop display mannequin, so it has all the dips and curves you’d want. They had the Australian market covered, with most of the fashion schools and big name designers using their forms. They also made an expandable version but with no knowledge of grading, they just split it the standard form down the centre front, centre back and sides. They sold very well, but I can’t say I was ever a fan. I do have a 51 inch bust version, which is the based on the original 34 inch bust version, and she’s quite a good shape. She’s a bit idealised, particularly under the bust, where many larger women carry extra girth, but considering the variations that occur at this size, she’s a reasonable average of all possibilities. I have pulled her as tightly closed as I can, and covered her so I can get a decent centre line.

I used to enjoy going into their showroom. It was the last old house left in a suburb converted to industrial use, and I doubt it had been touched or repaired since the 70’s. Entering the building felt a bit precarious, as if you weren’t quite sure that the floorboards would hold. Every room was full of mannequins, and it looked like you’d walked into a cocktail party full of naked supermodels and pushed the pause button.

I don’t know if they would sell internationally, and they are semi retired now, and scaling down a lot, but I think the son has started making the models again, so I’m not sure what he intends to do. http://www.dummieswa.com.au/

By: elaine

elaine — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:10:56 +0000

Kathleen,

How do i purchase the dress form from nanasai? I don’t read japanese. Please help!

By: cuttingline

cuttingline — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:39:24 +0000

Kathleen Thanks for the great diagram of correct orientation of the arm! The misinformation about the arm hanging straight down from the upright rectangle (right figure) has plagued American pattern and fitting books since simplified dressmaker blocks of the 1920s. I teach my students to draft sleeves based on tailoring systems since, as you frequently illustrate (German armscye photo above), the tailors start with anatomy and work to accommodate it. The dismal pattern books from this country attempt to square-off and upright every thing about the blocks as if people were uniformly shaped like a flat pack spec’d garment. Continue to bust myths and dispel the clouds of misinformation out there, like the true Crusader Rabbit you are Kathleen. The future of any kind of decent fitting depends on preserving and sharing the increasingly lost skills and thinking of previous sculptors of cloth. The popular pattern books have been so dumbed down as to make them useless for the person who wants to know “why?”.

By: CDBehrle

CDBehrle — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:43:32 +0000

The shape of this new forms is fabulous, cements perfectly for me why I’ve never, ever worked on a form – they drive me crazy! I Hope one day Bunka will distribute to US. I’ll be first in line!

By: gilda

gilda — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:51:02 +0000

i just wanted to add that bunka doesn’t ship overseas because of how fragile the forms are, and they wouldn’t want to be liable in case it gets dented.

also, i am quite sure i remember them having larger, ie, larger than size 9 forms.

i previously tried purchasing a quarter-size form here in new york from two of the most famous companies (who my teachers at parsons insisted were the best). upon going to the factory to buy the form, i asked the guy there what size the form is for. ie, it’s a quarter size of a size 8? 10? etc.

his answer was that the quarter-size is too small to make and hence although it would cost like $200, it’s just a small form and not properly sized at all. it’s just a very rough gauge.

i thought that was nonsense and promptly bought both the half-size and quarter-sized forms from bunka when i was there in january visiting ex-classmates.

those are true to size and when you multiply by 4, will give a proper size 9. their quarter-sized forms are made of out rubber, but you can still push pins, etc into it for draping. in bunka we were also taught to make patterns in 1/4 sizes, so this is perfect to test a garment out, and then later blow it up to full-size. we don’t only use it for draping purposes.