Fashion draping is an important part of fashion design. Draping for fashion design is the process of positioning and pinning fabric on a dress form to develop the structure of a garment design.

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We sell a variety of sewing dress forms at Mannequin Madness – something for every price range. We sometimes have used Wolf and Alvanon dress forms that we sell a deep discounts here.  So we get lots of questions about how to drape a garment, this blog post and video should answer your questions.

And if need to customize a dress form so that it can have your exact measurements, we recommend the Fabulous Fitting System Dress Form pads which cost around $70.

A garment can be draped using a design sketch as a basis, or a fashion designer can play with the way fabric falls to create new designs at the start of the apparel design process. After draping, the fabric is removed from the dress form and used to create the sewing pattern for the garment.

While the majority of companies in the fashion industry no longer use draping as part of the design process, draping is a key skill which allows apparel designers to understand what creates a great fit and how to achieve it.

If a garment sample fits poorly, a designer who is familiar with how darts and seams give shape to garments can spot what is creating the fit issue and advise the factory how to correct the problem.

We found this video on Youtube that clearly demonstrates what draping means. The video features, expert draper Barry Sellers from the Hartford Stage.

For three decades, Barry Sellers ’81 has brought costume designers’ sketches to life. As the Hartford Stage’s draper, he has created more than 1,000 costumes for almost 200 productions.

Hartford Stage is one of the leading resident theatre’s  in the United States. The theatre has earned many of the nation’s most distinguished awards, including the Regional Theatre Tony Award, the Margo Jones Award for Development of New Works, OBIE and New York Critics Circle Awards, an Elliot Norton Award

 

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