eShakti Customization Review

Dress Review

This OOTD may be out of season, but it's exciting for me! It's a cute sundress and has all the elements of a dress I love. An illusion neckline, a lace print, and a nice length. eShakti contacted me about doing a dress review for them and I gladly obliged. As always, the the opinions on my blog are honest and my own. Let me give you a little background on the history of the company.

eShakti was created in 2004 as an online clothing retailer, but switched to focus only on women's apparel in 2005. Their name stems from the sanskrit word "Shakti", which means power or strength, and the addition of the "e" at the front symbolizes their belief in the power of the internet. The CEO of eShakti, B.G. Krishnan, wanted to explore the idea of "custom clothing" using the internet. They've been featured on NBC, LifeHacker, Wall Street Journal, Jezebel and have won a handful of accolades on their utilization of customization. They offer custom sizing, where you input your own measurements, and "standard" sizing from size 0-36W. As someone who is on the more petite size, I was excited to see that they offered such a huge size range. Their dresses range from $50-$150 dollars.

Now you know my measurements. 

For this dress I chose to explore the "custom sizing" option. eShakti usually charges a $7.50 for "custom sizing", but if it's your first time purchasing from eShakti they'll give you your initial custom order for free. I wanted to see if the dress was really, truly made for me. I put in my own measurements and I decided to make the dress end "above my knee." I didn't want the length of the dress to further accentuate my short stature.

The custom sizing field was easy to navigate and eShakti had helpful picture guides to show exactly where to measure. What I found silly was that they asked for the length of your arm, which makes sense for sleeved dresses, but they gave the options: Short, Average, and Long without specifying the values of each. What is an average arm? A short one? They give helpful guides and pictures with every other measurement, but left this one painfully blank.

Every garment is cut and made to your order, in order to save on warehouse costs incurred storing large amounts of product, so there might be a wait time on your garment. I chose the "Heather" dress for two reasons: I wanted something that I would be happy to wear over and over again and I wanted to see if their quality matched their price tag.

Verdict? Yes and No. The material and make of the dress was above average quality. I would say that the the dress design and material is something that you would find at J.Crew or Ann Taylor, however there was one detail that was lacking for the price: The bodice.

In addition to the eyelet fabric, the second thing that I was most excited about was the illusion neckline. However, it just wasn't well executed. I expected there to be boning in the dress to at least hold the bodice up, but instead there was just an elasticized band meant to cling onto your bosom. My boobs are small, like the rest of me, so I don't have the girls to securely hold the bodice up. What ends up happening is that when I wear the dress there's a flaccid, flappy piece of opaque fabric in between the eyelet lace and my skin. With proper arranging it looks great, but you have to be wary of a wardrobe malfunction. For $140 dollars, I expected a little more support. Ultimately, I also think that's what divides it from taking it to the "next level".

I think their other dress choices would have equivalent quality to price. Here are some other cute designs that I liked from their site:

Mesh Insert Poplin Dress

Embellished Yoke Poplin Dress

Morgan Dress

I've read mixed reviews about them from other blogs, but on the whole my experience with them was positive. I would purchase from them again just to compare experiences and see if the dresses were high quality.

On that note, remember my contest ends tomorrow! So please enter if you want a $25 giftcard!