** Brides, there is an opportunityt to win a couture wedding veil from Yemi Kosibah provided at the end of this feature **
Morning folks :) And how does this email find you this morning? What a week last week was! Never mind the news headlines, it must have been one of the busiest weeks for me in a long time! And so, I rewarded myself with a day off yetserday. Today, is going to be a busy day, so let me get right on with some super wedding blog content.
This morning I'm really delighted to be introducing you to an indepdent dress designer I've been 'watching' on the interweb for sometime now. His name is Yemi Kosibah and he first grabbed my attention via Twitter some months ago now when he began engaging in always polite and pleasant conversation. It was some months after this that I was attending the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners annual ' Excellence in Wedding Planning' conference, where I was presenting, that Yemi's name was bought up again. It turned out Yemi is pretty highly regarded in the wedding industry and has a reputation for helping Brides look truly stunning on their wedding day. The 'he makes 'real' women look fabulous' comment someone made on the day has stuck with me since. We all want to look amazing on our wedding day don't we? But very few of us share the tiny figures promoted by models in the wedding magazines.
Award winning Yemi {you should also see these photographs too}, who works with Brides from all over the world, designs and creates the most fabulous, figure enhancing, couture and contemporary wedding gowns from his London studio and shop. He also specialises in evening wear and Mother of the Bride outfits. Yemi's use of corsetry and boned bodice recreate the classical and elegant hourglass figure that curve, shape and flatter the wearer. Yemi tells me in fact, that on average, he is able to 'nip 3”' off the waist...
"Because I was trained in Old-School Couture, I create gowns with an individual client in mind - in a process that involves creating an individual Body Block for that client on paper using over 26 precise body measurements, drafting all patterns from that Block, making up a mock version of the gown in muslin or calico (the 'toile') to fit onto the client in order to ascertain and correct any technical or aesthetic issues, going back to correct these issues, and creating another Toile to ensure a perfect fit has been achieved and only after these steps developing the pattern for the actual garment. The gown is then cut in the actual fabric chosen and stitched up..."
Love My Dress Wedding Blog - Imagery Supplied by Yemi Kosibah
The creation of each garment takes hours of painstaking work and involves a lot of hand finished details. Typically, a Kosibah bride is a discerning professional woman who is accustomed to luxury products of the highest standards and who has a strong sense of style and wants a gown a little different from the norm without compromising on taste and/or elegance.
She is a woman who is not afraid to celebrate her femininity in a gown that shows her figure at its best..."
"As a very young child, aged about six or seven years old, I realised that I was very good at drawing and after attending weddings with my parents I would return home and sketch the whole bridal party in profile from the bride to the flower girls. Later on, I started creating the outfits my figures were wearing from ideas from my own imagination.
In my teenage years, I fell under the spell of the glamour and sophistication of Bob Makie’s costumes for Diana Ross. I just loved the way in all her concerts she went through numerous changes of uber glamorous gowns. This has had a long lasting effect of my designs. I also very much admired Anthony Prices seemingly gravity defying gowns for jerry hall and Paula Yates. It was very obvious that there was quite a lot going on inside the gown not visible from the outside to create such figure enhancing gowns. I realised that this was what I wanted to do as a career and that’s exactly what I’ve done..."
"Growing up in Nigeria, West Africa, I was used to seeing women of all shapes and sizes and therefore I feel very comfortable designing for ‘real’ and curvaceous women. Therefore, celebrating the female form is my main inspiration.
Because all my gowns are bespoke and made from scratch specifically for each client, making her look and feel her best on her wedding day is my main focus. I also draw inspiration from the vibrant, multicultural life of London which is now my home. The capital’s diverse population allows me to fuse influences from across the world into my designs with the luxurious fabrics, sumptuous embellishments and meticulous attention to detail usually associated with the finest traditions of Parisian couture...."
"I love the knowledge that something I am creating from an idea in my head is going to be the focal point of such an important day in a Bride's life. I also achieve great satisfaction from the stunned looks of amazement from family, friends and most especially the groom when first see my client with her shape transformed as a result of her wearing my gown. It makes all the hours of hard work worthwhile..."
Yemi has a section on his website dedicated to showcasing real Brides in their Kosibah dresses...
