Halloween 2011

Trying to learn something from last year, and remembering how tiring it all was, the prep for Halloween this year started at the beginning of July.

Usually this starts with a full evening of sitting around with various snacks (which this year consisted of pizza, crisps and a bottle of wine) and going over how last year can be improved on.

Early planning was key this year, as we had two events that were going to coincide-the release of the Halloween collection, and only two weeks earlier was to be the launch of our first major A/W collection. That's planning fail number one-not the best idea to have two such big events within such a small time frame, but with advanced planning we'd manage quite well.

So the evening of planning consists of making Halloween 2011 better than 2010, and this obviously includes the costumes we make.

I'd sketched over 20 outfits out with various annotations as several had really complicated details-these were the first to be scrapped just for sheer logistics, and because these designs would have taken four times longer than all the other, we either had to scrap them (which is what happened), cut out all the amazing details (wasn't going to happen), or charge several hundred dollars for a corset (again, not an option). The last option was to offer these designs at a loss and hope that our lovely customers would take pity on us and buy other things to go with the corsets, but that also wasn't going to work.

So 20 designs quickly became 16. We'd also decided to offer several of last years designs as they'd be so popular, and we'd already had enquiries about whether they would be offered this year-so we had to factor in all the time taken for those designs as well.

After a couple more hours of wrangling, and a bottle of wine later, the 16 remaining designs were cut to 11. The next task was to make sure that all of the designs were feasible, in terms of time taken, costs and what they would be sold for to still be reasonable for most people. Some of the designs were perfect from my first drafts, several changed in certain aspects, and some changed completely to be less labour intensive and more affordable.

These 11 new designs were added to the 9 carried over from last year, and here we stood with 20 Halloween designs.

The designs all get made up and then any little tweaks are done at this point. This process tends to be a little long winded as the designs all need to work as well on a size 20 as they do on a size 6. Once done, the next step is the photos-this is my favourite part as it's the culmination of all that hard work, and seeing the designs modelled and made up is such a great feeling, when all they've been before is a sketch on a page.

Anyway, now all the designs have been photographed and are ready for this Halloween.

We'll be releasing the first designs on Tuesday-the 6th of September-and will be releasing the designs on the space of a week. The designs will initially be made to order for the first three weeks whilst we make up stock of the ranges, and will then be available to purchase and shipped out immediately.

To make things run smoother, anyone who orders one of the Halloween outfits this year will receive upgraded shipping for free-so all Halloween outfits will be sent by 1-2 day courier for no extra charge.

We will also be offering the different parts of the outfit separately as well as together-you'll receive a discount for buying the whole outfit against the individual prices, but if you just want one aspect of an outfit, then this year you'll be able to just get it and go.  

And as a reward for getting this far, a sneak peek at two of the new designs for this year-our Ring Master and Clown designs.