If you are designing your own dress form Christmas tree (or jazzing up a store bought one) wanna know what the one feature is that can transform it from “nice” to “AMAZING!?”
It is the ribbon around the waist that does it.
The color, pattern, width and length of the ribbon has a big impact on the overall look. So many people underestimate the importance of this accessory and just put a generic ribbon with a simple bow around the waist.
The same fashion styling tips that apply for clothing apply with styling a dress form Christmas tree. The details are in the accessories!
For example, imagine that your dress form Christmas tree was a gorgeous evening gown or sexy cocktail dress. and you accessorized it with a basic pair of shoes, a lackluster purse and boring jewelry. It would drag down the overall impact of the dress.
Choosing the right ribbon as well as styling that ribbon is an art. We asked an associate of ours, Chase Connery, a former visual merchandiser at Bloomindgales in the 80’s (the golden years of window displays) to come to our warehouse so we could film him demonstrating how to make a dramatic ribbon.
Even with all of our years of experience in designing dress form Christmas trees, we had never considered using multi-layers of ribbon in contrasting colors, until we saw him do it in the example above.
And we also began experimenting with having long curly trailing tails on the ribbon like he did. We love the difference it makes.
Chase had so much information to share, we divided it into two youtube tutorials. Here is part 1 and here is part 2
If you are looking for unique ribbons and other holiday-themed decorating items, we recommend our partner Papermart.com. (We like to support women owned, independent businesses whenever we can)
Papermart offers our customers a 10% discount (including sale items) with the code MannequinMadness2023. And they are contributing a gift certificate to 2nd place winner in our annual Dress Form Christmas tree contest.
Mannequin Madness has been a leader in designing dress form Christmas trees for almost two decades. For more design tips on making a dress form Christmas tree, visit this link on our website.
Dress form Christmas trees are our favorite style of holiday decorations. Yes, we’ll admit that part of the reason is because we sell new and used dress forms. But it is also because the trees are an eco-friendly way to decorate.
After the holidays are over, you can repurpose the dress form to use for other events and needs. You can remove the decoration and use the form to display clothing or jewelry. Or you can add different decorations and use it for seasonal or holiday displays throughout the year such as fall and spring.
To bring this blog post to a close, here is one more example of the power of the ribbon. Isn’t that bow gorgeous?
