Unfortunately, I had a terrible experience. I purchased a Vera Wang sample sale dress last December that needed to be brought in and up a bit. I reached out to Hemali based on recommendations I found on NextDoor, etc. and brought the dress in five months pre-wedding. I found it a little strange that she didn't measure me or pin the dress then - just eyeballed it and said she knew just what to do. This was not my experience with previous dress fittings, but I went with it based on the reviews. The dress was rolling up a bit in the mid-section as I'm a bit short-waisted, so I asked if it should be brought up from there instead of the bottom/hem, but she said no. I left the dress with her, and she promised it by early August.
I checked in with her the last week of August as I hadn't heard anything, and at that time she told me it would be done the following week. I expressed that I was a nervous we were cutting it close on time. A week later I checked in again when I hadn't heard anything, and she told me once more it would be done soon. I was finally able to have a fitting exactly two weeks after I first followed up - which was about 2.5 weeks before the wedding.
When I came in, the dress did not fit. It was too tight in the back and waist, and just generally ill-fitting. She tried to convince me it was perfect, but I asked her to take it out so that I didn't have a back fat roll (I weigh 130 lbs for reference) and bunching around my waist. She agreed to fix it, and we made plans for me to come back a week later. Once again, she did not pin it - and when I asked if she was going to, she said, no. On my way home, she texted me and told me it would be $650 instead of the $500 she originally quoted me because it was "more work than she anticipated."
I came back a week later (just shy of a week before my wedding) and the dress once again did not fit - this time it was way too loose. I expressed my concerns and she again tried to convince me it was perfect. The strapless top was falling off me, and she told me to use two-sided tape to keep it up. We eventually decided she would add some quick darts to tighten it a bit. I also mentioned it seemed too long to me, but she told me it was right (covering my shoes and pooling about an inch at the bottom). I expressed several times throughout the appointment that I felt things weren't right - but she kept saying it was perfect and I was just too stressed/close to it (which she'd done before when I asked questions). People pleaser that I am, I paid her and left. When I got home, I tried on the dress again, and when I moved my arms up, it fell off my chest (fully exposing my breasts). I looked closer then at the work and saw that there were glue spots all over the bottom of the dress where the applique had been moved and repositioned with the hem, and at the top of the dress there was fabric piecemealed in a way that looked like it was done by an amateur crafter - from being taken in too much and then let back out. I texted her videos with my concerns, and she tried to blame the issues on me - saying she'd had it perfect originally but I'd told her to take it out; she also blamed the fabric, the original size, etc. on the issues, but none of these concerns were expressed to me when I dropped the dress and she took the job. After arguing with me for a bit, she said I could come back in the next day and she could fix it. After sleeping on things and feeling generally bad about the process to-date, I decided to get a second opinion and took the dress to a very reputable Cherry Creek tailor. They were appalled and told me I should ask for a refund, that it would cost an additional $1,600 to fix the damage (plus an additional 30 percent rush fee on top of THAT since I am now a week from the wedding) and properly tailor it (from the waist up). They also pointed out so many bad techniques (even a hole where she didn't close a seam) that needed to be ripped out and re-done. Despite the ability to make a decent amount of money off me for the extensive fixes, in the end, they said that I'd probably be better off at this stage finding a new dress and having it properly tailored. After regaining my composure, I reached out to Hemali to tell her the situation and asked her what she thought would be fair from a refund/compensation standpoint as I not only had the dress I'd previously purchased damaged/ruined, and had paid a decent amount of money to her for it to be made so, I now had to find a new dress and pay a rush fee for tailoring. She responded that she would not be issuing any sort of refund.
So today, I took the full day off work to find an off-the-rack dress, then took it back to the reputable tailor. They ended up waiving the late fee because they felt so bad for me.
I'm now out about $2K on the original dress, and even more than that on the rushed new one. read more