Vogue/McCall/Simplicity/Butterick
I’ve looked at all of the above now and I am a little disappointed with the (lack of) upto-datedness of them. They all have nice evening dresses though, but for normal daywear stuff I’d have to say the
better ones [the most updated] were probably McCall and Simplicity. [I noticed that a lot of the patterns on all the sites have the ‘Misses’ title, does that mean their made by the one company, distributed through different suppliers?
]
But the reason as I said is age target market for styles- some are okay but there’s not a huge amount of those…and the youngest styles seem kind of early20ish+
And the other thing with a lot of them, is the fit of the style, because it *appears* to be targeted at a certain age range, the fit isn’t right either.
It’s like at Dorothy Perkins the age range for clothing seems to be [roughly] 25-30+ though their styles are often quite similar to that found in younger age range shops [but somewhat toned down] and quite fashionable *but* the fit is different. E.g.-the trousers there never fit me properly because the thighs are made wider which makes them sag and not drape properly and the whole thing looks funny…[but! I found a great pair of jeans there because these days there’s slimfit everywhere and none of the jeans at the shops I normally shop at fit me!]
For example one time I got a dress pattern (I think from mcCalls) kind of like this [ok i cudnt find the exact pattern so i drew the sleeve on this one to demonstrate
]:
For my GCSE Textiles project (year 10-11) I wanted to use it to make a trouser suit (the kameez part) and this was the closest thing I found that was the right length with the right size sleeve. I thought I’d just take the bottom half out a bit so it widens instead of narrows, and put in two side splits, sew up the back split and create my own neckline. But then once I made it and tried it I found the shoulders were kind of square-ish and stuck out a bit making the top half look kind of big and poofy whereas it was supposed to lie softly and flat and not look sharpish. I thought I could adjust it enough to make it look okay but the whole shape of it didnt seem right for my target market. It only seems like a small thing (so I never really thought anything of it before I started making) but it kind of makes all the difference to the look. I realised its like this because the original pattern is meant to look like that coz that’s how the styles just meant to be. It might be to do with the size/shape/angle-ing of the armhole or the distance between the shoulders I don't know :s. But different age bodies have different types of fit that suit/make a garment look like its made for a certain age range (generally speaking) so i think there needs to be more up to date stuff aimed at 15-24’s-ish type age in terms of fashion and fit...