Custom making ballroom dresses in China?

jenniegirl said:
i have made costumes in china before, it didnt turn out too good. of cos, there are a lot of different makers in china, check out their price range, if its too cheap to be good, u know what to expect.. if they charge cheaper than what european costume makers do but the range is still nearer, then they should be the better ones..
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After having gone the same route, while the quality CAN be good, for any type of dance wear, I've found that it's only logical to get a tailor who specializes in dancewear to make it. There are numerous little details and issues which all contribute to a great garment that simply won't be given attention if the tailor doesn't understand what's involved in making a piece of clothing "danceable." As China isn't a major ballroom dance hub in the world, your likelihood of finding an ideal tailor in the country itself is slim, given the number of tailors there are total.
 
Larinda McRaven said:
Not quite sure this is an accurate statement. China has a Mostrously Huge dance industry. It has a big "pro-am" and "showcase" culture and some geared to competition. Lots of these women are having lots of dresses made on a continual basis. They never want to wear the same dress twice. So some one is making LOTS of dresses over there.
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Good point Larinda, but I was mainly talking about competitive dancing. In other words, I don't recall any major competitions being advertised for China. (But then again, maybe I just missed some!) At any rate, I was trying to contrast the huge number of tailors willing to make garments with the likely tiny number who would specialize in professional-looking dance attire.
 
Josh said:
As China isn't a major ballroom dance hub in the world...
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In which world? The number of Chinese dancers at big comps like Blackpool and the UK grows every year, and their dancers are placing very highly in these events. Plus, the sheer number of dancers ranging from adults who do it every day for exercise (in place of tai chi, for instance), to hoards of kids doing dancesport in both private and state-run schools, is staggering. Heck, I was at a private dancing school in a rather backwater city in China a few years ago -- it was January, the studio was completely unheated, the temperature was hovering around the freezing point of water, and still about 100 kids showed up daily for lessons and practice.

Someone (probably several someones) in China is making very good gowns, but it isn't (in my opinion) Rainbow Shu. I bet part of why it's been difficult to find the web sites of the good gown makers is that the sites are going to be published in Hanzi (Chinese characters), so you're not going to pick them up with a web search done in English.
 
Suspect that will change as they realize what kind of market there is here. That's been a rather recent development with bespoke men's tailors in China and HK, they're all starting to get english websites made up to reach the American and european customers.
 
There are also a growing number of international caliber competitions in mainland China. Two off the top of my mind are the Shenzhen Open and Beijing Star (I believe there's one in Shanghai as well) - both feature international panels and top dancers in ballroom and latin, both professionals and amateurs. Laura is correct in saying that there are massive numbers of kids in state-run dance schools; a competition in Henan province is easily the size of Blackpool, if not larger, and most of the competitors are kids/youth. Moreover, as Larinda points out, there is a huge pro-am industry in Hong Kong, where many top professionals make a sizable percentage of their annual income.

Regarding dresses, I've heard of a number of dressmakers in the southern part of mainland China that are very good - apparently, all the top competitors in China go to them for their gowns/latin dresses. However, I don't have the specific contact information for them...only heard of them through the grapevine. While I'm sure they can benefit from an English website, a lot of these dressmakers have enough demand for their services in China alone, and expansion may not be currently at the top of their minds.
 
Josh said:
You probably won't find any for things like a tailor shop... it's just not really their way or part of their approach to business. These folks are working long hours at their machines making garments, and so why have a web site?
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Are we talking about the same country? Unexpectedly (to some people), those folks work long hours at their sewing machines, yet still found sometime to build websites. Though not in English.
www. timesdance.com.cn

Sorry that you were not informed when they changed their approach to business.
 
Musique said:
Are we talking about the same country? Unexpectedly (to some people), those folks work long hours at their sewing machines, yet still found sometime to build websites. Though not in English.
www. timesdance.com.cn

Sorry that you were not informed when they changed their approach to business.
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Nice web site...! (too bad someone forgot to tell them that it shouldn't take 2+ minutes for the intro to get to the main menu with no way to skip, unless I just missed the button) Speaking of which, what is that beautiful song--it's so familiar...?

Musique, we ARE talking about the same country, but not the same company, as I've obviously never heard of this one. This is a great example of what I'm saying is not really very common. Tell me, in your past visits to China, did you find most tailor shops advertising nice web sites like this one? The ones I visited certainly did not, though it has been a few years ago since I last visited.
 
For the couple of you saying "huh?" to my previous posts about China not being a major ballroom dancing country, I'd like to clarify that I'm taking into context the population of the country. Okay, there are a few top dancers placing, and some great websites. Compare this PER CAPITA with other countries, and you're likely to find that it's quite small in comparison. Did you forget that China has 1.3 billion people, and we're talking about four or five top couples, and a handful of speciality tailors?
 
Laura said:
The number of Chinese dancers at big comps like Blackpool and the UK grows every year, and their dancers are placing very highly in these events.
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I went to the blackpool site and for 2006 found that in the pro standard there were 16 out of 250 couples who danced for China, with about 7 couples placing in the top 100 on average.

It's amazing how many Japanese competitors are at Blackpool--112 couples out of the 250 listed were Japanese. Amazing!
 
Josh said:
I went to the blackpool site and for 2006 found that in the pro standard there were 16 out of 250 couples who danced for China, with about 7 couples placing in the top 100 on average.

It's amazing how many Japanese competitors are at Blackpool--112 couples out of the 250 listed were Japanese. Amazing!
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The Japanese couples don't have comparable visa issues.

I don't think that participation as a percentage of overall population really means much of anything. What matters is critical mass of participation in a given area to really get something going. The US is a huge country with a large population, but our world-visible competitive ballroom scene is confined to just 3-4 metro areas.
 
Few years ago, I inquired into one of the popular dressmaker in Shenzhen. I still don't know her name as I walked into the studio where people told me where she might be but she wasn't there. However, I did get a ballpark pricing. Not cheap at all! Perhaps they saw that I didn't look like a local :) Back then it was already close to $2000USD (14000RMB) minimum & the price can go up to 20K to 30KRMB. You're looking at regular couture pricing.

The dancesport schools probably have their own deals with the local dressmakers due to high volume. Their gowns are nice looking, but probably not as high quality. The top amateur & pro competitors have very high quality gowns (saw some awesome ones at the China Nationals). The top couple is sponsored by Chrisanne (Yang Chao & Yilin Tan).

China has 3 (and possibly 4) very large international competitions (this does not even count the ones held in Hong Kong). One is IDSF in Shanghai (back in 2006, it was even a Grand Slam final), the other ones have been mentioned, Shenzehn Open & Beijing Star.

BTW - Larinda was right. There're lots of people in China who can afford very high price gowns (and we're NOT talking about the rich Hong Kong Pro/Am ladies). I was joking one time when I was in Shanghai that I was the poor American walking around in fake name brand shirt while the locals were spending over 20K RMB for the real stuff! But with that said, there're only a few rich regions in China like that.
 
Josh said:
After having gone the same route, while the quality CAN be good, for any type of dance wear, I've found that it's only logical to get a tailor who specializes in dancewear to make it. There are numerous little details and issues which all contribute to a great garment that simply won't be given attention if the tailor doesn't understand what's involved in making a piece of clothing "danceable." As China isn't a major ballroom dance hub in the world, your likelihood of finding an ideal tailor in the country itself is slim, given the number of tailors there are total.
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The person whom i made the costume from in china claims that he has done many costumes before. He said he specialises in latin dancewear. In the end, the result was so-so.. had to alter it when it reached me. spent more money than expected. thats why i am asking people about the good tailors there instead. if not i will be custom making my costume in europe instead.
 
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