What Is The Best Dress Form For Fashion Design?

I feel like this is a much needed follow up to my guide on the best dress forms for women sewers, which has been super helpful for those non-professionals who want a dress form for draping and fitting their sewing projects, but isn’t necessarily filled with the best options for those who want to drape as a way of designing fashion.

I graduated from fashion school well over 10 years ago, and gained plenty of experience with different dress form types across my interning and freelancing time, so I figure I am in a great position to run through the more professional dress form brands available.

What Is A Dress Form?

I’m not going to go deep into this as I have already covered this in significant detail in the guide mentioned above, but a dress form resembles a human figure and is used to create clothing designs based upon that human figure.

Do Fashion Designers Need A Dress Form?

Not necessarily. Many fashion designers actually dislike working in 3D – which is what draping is – and instead like to design using pen and paper, or a digital device.

Those who prefer to work with the fabric properties when designing will most likely find it beneficial to use a dress form as part of their design process.

I myself find that I am more creative as a fashion designer and creative pattern cutter when I incorporate draping on my dress form.

Do You Need Professional Dress Form To Design Fashion?

If you were to ask me when I was at fashion school, I would have answered yes to this question, but the reality is that if you understand fabric – the way it falls, its structural integrity and movement – then any dress form will work as a base for designing.

I invested in a professional dress form while at fashion school because I believed it was essential for me to be a better designer. It’s a K&L dress form in a size 12 – but it is the size 12 used by higher end ‘designer’ brands and not at all realistic in size.

Had I bought myself a more realistic dress form, it would have had to have been an adjustable dress form – the kind with plastic base and a fuzzy fabric overlay used by home sewers and students – as the ‘professional’ brands didn’t accommodate larger and more accurate sizing back then. And it would have been perfectly fine to use it as a design tool.

What Are The Professional Dress Form Companies?

With an ever increasing number of independent fashion designers starting their own businesses, there has been an increase in the number of companies that design and make more professional dress forms, and as such there are several of them now designing for larger body shapes and sizes at accessible price points.

This means that instead of relying on a fabric-covered, non-padded adjustable dress form at the lower end of the price spectrum, we’re now in a position to buy fixed size dress forms that are considered semi-professional with decent padding at a sensible price point.

In full transparency I reached out to Alvanon, K&L, PGM and Royal dress Forms to see if they would be interested in sending any specific items for more in depth reviews, and I heard nothing back from any of them, so there is zero potential for bias in the following section!

Alvanon

I’ve been following Alvanon over on Instagram for a while now. As well as creating physical dress forms for professionals, Alvanon also has a virtual version too, which is great for those who prefer a more 2D draping and designing process.

Both versions of their dress form are called Alvaform and they provide dress forms that are very diverse in sizing and body shape.

Alvaforms have been sighted across the world – they came onto my radar while watching the show ‘Next in Fashion’.

Unfortunately, they are the only company on my list that isn’t transparent about pricing for their physical dress forms. I did reach out to them in a DM, but I didn’t hear back from them regarding pricing, so I’m going to assume that they’re significantly higher than the others we’ve covered here.

Kennett & Lindsell

Two of my three current dress forms are from K&L – purchased before I realized how size exclusive they are.

The sizing is very ‘RTW’ centric – the size 12 version I have has a 89 cm bust, 64 cm waist and 96 cm hips – but they do seem to be developing dress forms in barely larger sizes and at a more budget friendly price point too with their Kenneform models aimed at fashion students.

Glancing over their current offerings, it would appear that the largest bust size their womens forms currently go up to is 40.75” / 103 cm, which frankly, isn’t inspiring, but I am not surprised as their forms are used in fashion schools and design studios by many who don’t consider size inclusivity to be necessary. Ba da bing.

For those wanting less inclusive sized dress forms, you can make use of their ‘promotions & clearance’ offers, which I can’t link to directly as they update it frequently and will turn into an annoying broken link by January 2023.

Morplan

Another British company on the list. Morplan is my favorite London based store for all things fashion design, but their dress forms ran even smaller than K&L’s the last time I checked.

On their website, their version of a size 12 womens dressmakers dummy has a 86 cm bust, 70 cm waist and 91 cm hip. So the waist is probably more realistic and less ‘hourglass’ than the K&L but the sizing is still quite different at the bust and hips.

Of course, if you don’t mind padding the dress form, you can get the Morplan ones for a couple of hundred dollars / pounds less than what you’d pay Kennett & Lindsell.

But, there are other – and better! – professional dress form options available as well.

PGM Dress Forms

The US’s leading brand for professional dress forms, PGM are used by student and professional fashion designers alike, and actually have size inclusive dress forms. Yay!

I personally have been eyeing up the full body dress form in size 22L, but am terrified by how much I’ll get stung for import duty to have it sent over from the US on top of shipping costs as well.

The are many great things about the PGM dress forms which come as standard whereas other brands will charge you extra:

• Collapsible shoulders
• Adjustable height foot pedal
• Larger sizes that are realistic!

I’m going to stop now, but suffice it to say that PGM does good dress forms!

Royal Dress Forms

Royal Dress Forms seems more accessible in terms of price, and at first glance they appear to have inclusive sizing options for their dress forms as well, although the main images for each dress form style is the classic tiny waist scenario shared by both K&L and Morplan.

I’m not certain where they’re located but shipping seems to be fastest for US customers, so I assume that is their business base.

Wolf Form

Sadly Wolf Forms ceased business in 2017, their dress forms were some of the best and are available second hand occasionally, so I wanted to keep the mention of them here in this article.

If any of the above companies do reach out to me with pertinent information etc, I’ll be sure to update this article as appropriate but for now, it’s safe to say that if you want a dress form that is size inclusive, your best option is probably PGM Dress Forms as they at least share pricing and shipping costs on their website.

If you’re in the UK rather than the US, you can sometimes get a good deal on a second hand K&L or Morplan dress form on eBay or Etsy, but you’ll be stuck with smaller than average sizing and no chance of size inclusive dress forms.

I love the look of the Alvaform but without getting my hands on it – or information on their pricing! – I cannot possibly recommend them.

And if you’ve decided that a professional dress form is absolutely not necessary for your fashion design needs, then look at adjustable dress forms which are available at a significantly lower price points and suitable for anyone starting out.

I covered adjustable dress forms in detail in my article on the best dress forms for women who sew and best male dress forms too – though the latter has very few options to be honest. Perhaps it’s time for someone to jump in and develop more options for the men and larger women in the world?

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