Démodé

historical costume projects & resources

Does YOUR Uniquely You Irritate You?

Mine does. The crappy plastic ring that holds up the dress form broke long ago, and I have spent years using tape and a hot glue gun to try to get it to stay up… only to have it slide down days or even hours after I’ve jerry-rigged something. Well today, while sewing, I got mad enough that I finally went down to the local hardware store to see what they had. I wanted to report that I bought a stainless steel “collar” (basically looks like a big round metal washer – same technology as the crappy plastic ring they send you) for $3.99.

The 3/4 size JUST fit on the stand (they had to use a mallet to get it on, but once it was on there was just enough extra room to move it up and down). It has a screw built in that I tightened with an allen wrench and presto – dress form is UP. It’s been up for about 5 hours so far with no slippage… but even if it does, at least a solid metal ring will be easier to mess with than a broken plastic one. So if your Uniquely You irritates you as much as mine irritates me, get ye to your local hardware store (with your stand) and ask for a collar. You will thank me.

Edited to add: As of 9am the next day, it’s still up! With tons of petticoats and things on it! Yay!

7 thoughts on “Does YOUR Uniquely You Irritate You?

  1. Thank you. Mine is standing ok, but… it is digging into the foam and was partly up the hole and didn’t want to come out, then decided it wanted to creep slowly down the pole.

    I will be heading to the hardware store asap, with stand in hand. Thanks!

  2. They must have cheaped out in recent years. My older uniquely you has a metal ring.

  3. Loren – yeah, I’ve heard that some people’s came with a metal ring and others got plastic. It seems to vary.

  4. Mine does the same thing. My biggest problem with the Uniquely yYou is that I have a high ‘squish’ factor that the dress form does not have. My corsets easily lace me up 3-4 inches smaller than I am normally, and I’m not tight lacing. Most of my corsets would break if I tried to lace them that tight on my Uniquely You. I guess I could get a smaller Uniquely you, but for now it makes draping impossible for me.

  5. Lena: I’ve heard of other people having the same problem, particularly with the smaller sizes. IF you ever were up for the investment, I would get a much smaller version and pad it with cotton/poly batting and then make your own cover.

  6. Lena: You can always take a serrated knife and shave off parts of the foam to make it closer to your own body. I did that with mine, removing most of the breasts so that it would properly close under a corset (the breasts were saved so I can do modern clothes, too). Others I know have removed even more portions as needed, to make it closer to their actual body shape.

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