How to Buy a Dress Online Without Regretting It

You saw the dress on Instagram, you liked it, you ordered it. Then it came and the fit was slightly off, or the fabric was not what you pictured, and now it lives at the back of the wardrobe with the tag still on. Almost everybody has one. 

Know your measurements, not your size

Sizes mean nothing across brands. An 8 in one shop is a 10 in another and a 12 somewhere else, and that is before you get to whether the sizing is UK, US or somebody's own invention.

Take fifteen minutes once and get your bust, waist and hips measured properly, ideally by a tailor. Save the numbers in your phone. After that you never guess again, because a size chart is only useful if you know what to compare it against.

Every AMARAÉ dress has a size guide on its page with the model's height and what she is wearing, which tells you more than a letter or a number ever will.

Read what the fabric is

This is the part everyone skips and it decides more than the cut does.

Fabric tells you whether the dress will breathe in Lagos heat, whether it will crease sitting in traffic for an hour, whether it clings, and whether it holds its shape after a long day. Two dresses can look identical in a photo and behave completely differently once they are on you.

If the description does not say, ask before you order. Any brand worth buying from will tell you.

Look at the photos properly

Look for the dress moving, not just standing. A photo of someone mid-step tells you how the fabric falls, which a static shot hides completely.

Check whether there is a picture from the back and from the side. A dress with only front-facing photos is either being economical with the truth or has not thought about it, and neither is a good sign.

And check the lighting. Studio light flatters everything. A photo taken outside in normal daylight is a truer picture of the colour you are actually buying.

Ask before you order, not after

A quick message costs nothing. How does it run, true to size or small? Is there room to take it in? What is the length on someone my height? Does it need anything underneath?

The answers take two minutes and they save you a dress you never wear. If a brand is slow or vague when you ask, that tells you something useful too.

Buy with time for the tailor

Almost no dress fits perfectly straight out of the bag, and that is normal rather than a fault. A tailor takes in a waist, shortens a hem or adjusts a bust for very little.

What this means in practice is buy early. A dress ordered two weeks before the wedding can be adjusted. A dress that arrives on the Thursday is worn exactly as it came, and you spend the whole event pulling at it.

Buy for where you are going

The last one is the one that catches everybody. Be honest about the event before you buy, not after.

Sheer fabric and an open back are wonderful for dinner and wrong for a church service. A heavy lined dress is beautiful in an air-conditioned hall and punishing at an outdoor reception in March. The dress is not the problem in either case. The match is.

Most of the dresses gathering dust were bought without anyone asking where they were actually going to be worn.

Shop AMARAÉ with full size guides on every piece. Delivery across Nigeria and worldwide.

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