Portfolio Profile: Fossil Lucy Dress

I have to admit that I mostly created Fossil’s Lucy Dress for myself. It was (and still is) an ideal shape for my body, a great length for my height and it also has my favorite neckline shape. On top of that, the prints that were chosen for this dress in production are some of my favorites from my tenure at the company. A tiny, repeating giraffe print and Fossil’s iconic key print turned out to both be best sellers in Spring 2012.

The Lucy Dress is also very near and dear to my heart because the pattern was something I tinkered with until it was my version of perfect. (Nothing in the apparel industry can ever really be perfect. There is always one more detail that you could improve or plenty of customers who will dislike it. So “my version of perfect” is the best any one developer can do!)

My very favorite patterns to work on are the ones that have princess seams. So much shaping can be put into a good princess seam, and this Lucy Dress pattern had an ideal placement for exactly that. We worked very hard to get the armhole to sit flat against the fit model’s body, with no gaping at all. Continuous manipulation of the front and back seams extending into the armhole are what allowed us to achieve that goal.

I can rarely find a dress or top that hugs the body’s curves in a flattering way and also allows the garment to lay flat around the armhole and waist. I either feel like the garment is too tight in the chest circumference, or too loose and wrinkled around my shoulders. Learning how to fit this piece helped me to realize that anything can be accomplished in this industry. With a little time, persistence and willingness to experiment, fit issues that seemed impossible to fix can be a thing of the past.