New dresses! For $99! O happy day!

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We scored some amazing deals on fabric over the last week or so, and so today we are pleased to present our first collection of $99 dresses!

Rad Plaid is a bright beautiful double-knit poly that looks amazing against pale/pink complexions. If you are the Jo March/goofy schoolgirl type, or if you are (like Madge) a cobalt blue-aholic, jump on this one immediately.
Camelia is Beth to Rad Plaid's Jo – quietly intelligent, subdued, hard-working. Soft taupe and baby blue diamonds form a pretty-yet-neutral print that will work with tons of other items in your wardrobe.
Roll the Dice is what Amy March would wear if she were time-travelling to Vegas. Modern, fun, and totally wearable, this double-knit will take you through every part of your life – from visiting your aunt in Europe to burning your sister's unfinished novel – in an artsy and stylish way.
Iris is Meg, through and through: beautiful, feminine, and practical. This hemp/silk blend was hand-dyed (by Kelly!) and has a soft sheen. We love this fabric and plan to make more of it available in more colors in the near future. (Speaking of which, what colors would you like to see? Deep red? Saturated teal? Bright blue?). This fabric costs a pretty penny, so we can't sustain this price forever...grab it now for a song!

We also marked down a few other fabrics to make room for new ones. So today is the day to stock up!

And the winner is ...

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Thanks so much to everyone who entered the giveaway! Thanks to your efforts we got about a bajillion new visitors to our site! The big winner is ...

BRANDI LEMBURG! Congrats, Brandi! We'll be in touch later today with details on claiming your prize.
Thanks again to all y'all for helping us get the ball rolling. We appreciate your support and your ideas more than we can say. <3 <3 <3

We are officially open for business! And we're giving away a dress!

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Yes, today is the day! You can finally place an order for a shift or slip of your very own! And we have lots of great new fabrics like this one, The Purple One. You can see all our new slips and shifts in the shop. We're trying to spread the word, and we're bribing you to help by giving away a shift! For real!

Here's how it will work. Tell your friends about us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, whatever you're into, then come back here and leave a comment letting us know what you did. On Friday, Kelly and I will choose one commenter at random to receive an adorable custom-made shift at absolutely no charge.

So get to it, ladies and gents. And thanks, as always, for your kind support.

Pre-order week: New dresses, new measurements, and a video!

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As of today, the beta test is officially over. Thank you SO MUCH to our lovely guinea pigs -- through making your dresses and listening to your feedback, we've been able to learn a ton about how to make a cute and beautifully-fitting dress. There are still some beta testers we haven't heard feedback from -- if that's you, please do share your thoughts with us! And we still have a few dresses to get out which should make it out the door this week.

In the meantime, onward and upward to pre-orders! This week, the Kickstarter backers who chose the pre-order option have the run of the site. And we added a bunch of awesome new fabrics for you to choose from. Like the one at left!!!! You can see all the new dresses here.

We've also spent a bit of time revamping our pages on How to Order and How to Measure to make them more clear. And we made a little video to help guide you through the measuring process.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the updates. And mark your calendar, because everyone can order shifts starting next week!!

On Dress Length

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Here at Wear the Shift, we offer 2 lengths: mid-thigh and just above the knee. How do you decide which to order? There are a few things to keep in mind.


Kelly and I are both tall with long legs, so we have a slight bias toward the mini length. But even for us almost 6-footers, there are circumstances where the longer length works better. So let me go through the factors that seem to be involved in length as it relates to the cuteness of the dress.


Most important is where the fabric falls on the scale between stiff and drapey.


• Structured fabrics will look cuter as minis 90% of the time, because they hold their own shape rather than draping against the skin. In these materials, the shift's stylized shape looks awesome as a mini, but can get schlumpy in knee length. (This also depends on the print of the fabric -- see below.)


• Drapey fabrics fall from the shape of your body rather than holding their own shape. So these can work in either length.


• There are fabrics that manage to be both structured and drapey -- like our Rosie dresses, or some of the mid- and heavy-weight double knit polys. I wouldn't call them stiff, but they hold a bit of shape and also fall nicely.


Your build has a lot to do with it, too.


• Apple shaped folks with legs and boobs for days, just go for the short length in a structured fabric and thank me later. (Space Mum! Aloha! Sunny Garden Twill!)


• Pear shaped folks, or anyone who wants to belt the dress, choose something described as drapey and go knee-length. (Something like Once Upon a Fairy Tale, Frequency, or Manana)  It's hard to belt a stiff fabric and you lose a bit of length.


• Folks who want a knee-length dress for other reasons, make sure you choose a nice drapey fabric.


And you have to consider the print of the fabric.


• In general, a bigger and/or wilder pattern looks cuter as a short dress. This is because if your entire body down to the knees is covered with something crazy, it can look kind of crazy! Keeping it short breaks up the pattern so it can be lovely instead of overwhelming to your figure.


• If you are a wide person and you are choosing a horizontal-feeling pattern, I recommend going with the longer length to keep the proportions balanced. I never go for knee-length except in the dress pictured above, because I didn't want the dress to seem wider than it was tall!


There is a lot that goes into deciding on your fabric, and your length, and some of it is hard to decipher through a computer. For that reason, we are going to start recommending a length for each fabric. Override our guidelines at your peril!


No, really, we just want you to have lots of information so you can get the cutest shift possible. And we're always happy to answer any questions you have about any particular fabric.


I should also mention that sometimes we don't have enough of a fabric to make it go all the way to the knee. We'll continue to do our best to include this info in the description so that you get a shift that fits and covers your legs the way you want.

New Fabrics for the Beta Test Home Stretch

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Well, we've got just another week or so in beta, so this will most likely be our last update of fabrics before we go live for everyone! We are thinking of spring with this batch ...

Ciel is a dreamy sky-blue double-knit poly. It's medium weight, and has a basketweave texture, which makes a solid color knit much more interesting to wear. The texture also gives the fabric a nice body, so the shift will hold its shape when it's on you. The color is fun and versatile -- imagine it with a red cardigan or a purple blazer or gray tights.
Look Around You is a mid-weight cotton woven in a modern navy, white, and red print of circles filled with parts of circles. Is it just me, or does this remind you of owl eyes? Anyway, the cotton is nice and soft and not clingy, so it'll be nice for warm weather.
Punk As Heck is a lightweight knit poly that screams both prepster and punk. Purple and brown tweed patterns are blown out of proportion, ripped apart, and jammed back together in a new, more crazy/awesome pattern that could go upscale or wild, depending on your accessories. Have you ever seen anything like it? Me neither!
Gwen is a soft mid-weight cotton with sprays of orange, white, and periwinkle blossoms on a spring green background. The colors are lovely, and the fabric is super comfy to wear. Bees will buzz around you all summer!
Frequency is mental and I LOVE IT! This light to medium weight polyester blend has giant squiggles on it -- lime, olive, and kelly green -- that travel on a diagonal line. In addition to being insane, this kind of pattern is insanely flattering, especially to folks like me who aren't super hour-glassy.
Zig is a medium weight polyester knit, with zig zags of navy, yellow, and red running up and down it. It's a smaller scale pattern, great for shorter folks, and neutral enough even in its zagginess to be worn a lot. Accessorize with red wedges and a turquoise cardy, or flip flops and a corn dog.

How the beta test is going so far

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It's been about 2 weeks since we launched Wear the Shift in beta -- 2 very busy, slightly nerve-wracking, and strangely fun weeks. About half of the beta test orders are in, and all of those are in production. We will we sending out the first batch in just a few days! Of course, there have been some blerps -- exactly the kind of stuff we hoped to run into during the beta test, so we could learn how to deal with it.

As things crop up, my tendency is to freak out -- what if we run into a problem we can't solve? The stakes feel high! I know we're just making dresses, but they are dresses that I love. It surprises me how much I want to see them out there, bringing cuteness to the people. So I really, really want to make it work, and so does Kelly.

The funny thing is, we're not freaking out. Instead we've been seeing everything as a chance to learn. Thanks to the infusion of cash, enthusiasm, and ideas from our Kickstarter backers, we have a little time to work out all the little logistical stuff. Which is amazingly helpful, and for which we are super grateful.

What kinds of things are we learning? What people are attracted to fabric-wise. How to organize the way we do our work. How to get folks the information they need to get the dress they want. Who to buy zippers from. How to photograph fabrics so you get a sense of what they'll be like in person. Every day we go home with brains full of stuff to digest and ideas to try.

So ... the test is going exactly as we hoped it would. Experience points. We like it!

A Few New Fabrics

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We have some cute new fabrics this week that we'd like to introduce you to:

First up is this beauty, Spring Posies.  It has a nice weight and drape to it, and is going to make an adorable and flattering dress. Here in Pittsburgh we're sitting in the cold and snow...but those of you in warmer climates who are uncouth enough to wear white before Memorial Day (or is late-January after Labor Day?) should consider this adorable border print.
Ah, 1981. Much of my childhood looked like this... the End of Analog is a charming soft twill with a dotty diagonal plaid.
It's a party in here...a 1920s party! It Got Crowded in Here will be such a great slip: you could easily wear it under a lightweight light-colored dress, but it looks just as adorable on its own as a nightgown. Plus...the mustachios!
Cheery CherriesOn the other end of the subdued spectrum is Cheery Cherries. It's a delightfully wabi sabi fabric...it isn't perfect, but we can't help but love it. You won't be able to wear it under your featherweight white shift...but under something heavier, it'll keep your tights from sticking to your skirt (and you'll look adorable in the process).

There are a few additional fabrics up in the shop, too. Let us know what you like! And if you don't see what you like — let us know that too!

Say Hi to Hempcel: Soft and Strong

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We've been testing a variety of organic fabrics, and it's been a challenge to find something with the right balance of economy, environmental footprint, and overall cuteness... One of our first good finds is this Hempcel®. It's a blend of 55 percent hemp and 45 percent lyocell. It's made in China by workers who are paid a living wage and it's dyed with low-impact dyes.

Other reasons to like this fabric include:

  • Hemp is an easy-to-grow fiber that requires little processing — and it's tough as nails. If hemp was a woman, she'd be Rosie the Riveter.
  • Lyocell adds a softness and drape that's really flattering. Lyocell is made from beech trees in a closed-loop rayon process, which means the chemicals used in processing are recycled and reused, rather than discarded.

Together they make a fabric that's like your favorite pair of jeans — rugged, chic and effortless.

We have this in olive green and black. As a ginger person, the olive is my favorite — everything I own matches this dress, and I expect it to last forever.

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(My dress is really short — we only ordered a yard for initial testing...it's also one of my absolute favorites and makes any casual outfit a little bit cuter. Your dress will be proportionately longer.)

Tips on choosing your fabric

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We try to describe our fabrics well, but anyone who's bought textiles online knows that it's hard to look at pictures on a screen and understand the way a fabric feels and how it will drape. In making dozens of shifts over the last several months, we've learned a bit about which kind of fabrics make which kinds of shifts. None of our advice is hard and fast -- order what you love! -- just intended to give you more information to make your decision.

In general, a stiffer/heavier/more textured fabric results in a dress that holds its own shape better. As an apple shaped lady, I prefer these fabrics -- weighty knits, cotton canvas, blends with a bit of texture -- because they highlight the overall shape of my body without broadcasting the detail of every curve.

Midweight and lightweight cottons can work quite well, too, because they are crisp enough to keep their shape. You can iron and even starch them if you want.

Drapey lightweight knits are clingier, which doesn't work as well for me. But they work great for those with more junk in the trunk as the knit drapes to, then falls prettily from, the largest part of your body.

Again, take this or leave this. Any fabric you order will fit you and be cute -- we just want to give you all info we have to help you decide.

Happy hunting!

Let’s hear it for double knit!

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When I was 5, I had the most magical dress. It was turquoise, with a ruffle around the neck, and when I wore it, I was a lacy aqua enchantress; capable of great feats of book-reading, mirror-singing, and mermaid-pretending. Since it was the 1970s, my perfect dress was, of course, made from double-knit polyester.   And my aqua dress held up admirably to the many beatings inflicted upon it... until the fateful day when it would no longer zip up.  I still miss that dress.

And I continue to love this indestructible and colorful fabric. No doubt there's some nostalgia baked into that, but there's also the fact that it's just fantastic stuff. Here's why:

  • It's livable and forgiving, with a wondrous combination of stretch and structure. Wash it out and hang it to dry and wear it just a few hours later. Colors stay true; lines stay strong; most stains come right out.
  • Textile manufacturers of the 1970s era were, shall we say, less inhibited in their design and color offerings. Consequently, we have found some amazing / crazy / beautiful / hilarious stuff to make shifts from. There are lots of interesting-yet-wearable neutrals, too.
  • It's more comfortable than you think. There are some nasty-feeling ones for sure, but we would never use those. The DKPs we offer on our site are soft and cute and comfy.
  • It cannot be destroyed, unless you set out deliberately to do so.  In that case, you'll need to bring a flamethrower and a cross-cut shredder.
  • There is a lot of it out there! Which means that, even though it's not "natural," it's still an abundant and eco-friendly resource: the greenest fabric is one that is already manufactured.

I outgrew my magic aqua dress, but I still have great feats of book-reading, mirror-singing, and company-starting to perform, and DKP shifts are perfect for all that.

Gearing Up!

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This has become quite the adventure...learning, trying, thinking...and I think we're honing in on where we need to be to launch on time.  I'm so heartened by the response we've received. I'm not a web developer, and am relying on the generous support of my web developing partner, Dean, to get weartheshift.com built.  I assure you that your information is safe on our site.  Unfortunately, we may still be working out the nits and squiggles of the design.  Please bear with us while we grow.

xo, Kelly