For Daniela Lima, custom apparel company For You By You Fashion is literally a dream come true. “One night I had a dream about a friend who had all her clothes custom made, and she was the one creating them,” Lima recalled. “I woke up and I thought ‘Wow, this is something that I could do.’” Six years later, For You By You is taking off. Armed with experience in the fashion business, including stints at Cherokee Inc. and in the apparel licensing sectors of NBCUniversal and Paramount Pictures Corp., Lima is eager to enable “real people” to be their own fashion designers. “The whole idea of the business is to build your own custom clothing and bring your ideas to life,” she said. “The piece becomes very special because you created it.” Burbank-based For You By You combines traditional tailoring with technology. Following an in-person consultation with Lima, clients can opt to see mock-ups of their custom garments on a 3D avatar built to their specific measurements. Typically used by brands of large retailers such as Target Corp., the computer program gives clients a good idea of how the garment will fit before it has been made, ideally eliminating the possibility of dissatisfied customers or the need for substantial adjustments. “We can test the piece out very easily with two or three different fabrics or colors,” Lima explained. Once Lima and her client have finished the design, it is sent off to a local patternmaker, then to a seamstress. The construction of a pair of pants or a dress is around $500, depending on the fabric; an additional $60 consultation fee and the optional 3D visualization add-on bring the total to about $630. While pricey for the average consumer, Lima believes it is an exceptional value. “I compare it to when celebrities make their own lines – they sit down with a designer and (come up with) something that suits their style,” she explained. “This lets other people have their own brand, too.” Modern tailoring Large apparel brands and startups alike have clamored to offer custom clothing in recent years, eager to capitalize on the “personal brand” trend. Most companies limit offerings to variations on ready-to-wear clothes. For instance, Dresshirt’s classic tailored shirts can be personalized with names or short sayings. Others operate more like digital tailors, building garments from scratch based on customers’ measurements. Examples include eShakti.com, a women’s clothier; and mTailor, a platform for men that uses the camera on one’s smartphone to generate measurements, which can then be used to purchase custom shirts. Lima’s business is different in two ways. First, unlike eShakti, For You By You puts no limit on the type of clothing one can create. Before the initial consultation, a client takes an online quiz to give Lima a glimpse of his or her personal style. Lima will then conduct a “tailor presentation” at their first meeting, using images from fashion magazines or runway shows as inspiration for sketching out initial designs. Theoretically, a piece could be created from a client’s own drawing. “Sometimes a client knows exactly what they want,” Lima explained. “Other times they want to have custom-made clothes but they don’t know exactly what. That’s where the research and the presentation help a lot.” The service component is another factor that distinguishes For You By You from similar companies. While smartphone imaging might work for men’s clothing, women tend to require in-person measurements to guarantee a perfect fit, Lima explained. Every client also will have at least one fitting after the garment is made, regardless of whether they have elected to pay an extra $70 to see it on an avatar. “I don’t think the technology is advanced enough to really give you an accurate measurement,” Lima said. “At this point it’s better to do it the old-fashioned way using measuring tape.” Price question Manufacturing single pieces is a costly process, explained apparel industry veteran Darrell Kirk. His Canada-based manufacturing company, Tamoda Apparel Inc., builds small-batch orders for outerwear companies such as Patagonia Inc. and Eddie Bauer. “Our minimum order quantity is 500 units, though we have scaled down to 300 units (for some clients),” Kirk said. Apparel manufacturing technology has not kept up with demand for on-demand, at least not to the extent that “one-off” pieces can be made affordably. That cost comes back to the consumer, keeping many brands from being able to penetrate wider markets effectively. “The market is calling for exactly what (Lima) is doing – but the question is, are they willing to pay for it?” Kirk added. “Even our successful clients who are making really incredible clothing can’t get ahead of $10 million because they can’t get the price down.” So far, Lima has targeted a segment of the market that is willing to pay a premium price for premium clothes. Her clients are primarily affluent women between the ages of 35 and 55 who take pride in their appearance, she said. “These are women who value fit,” Lima said. “They can see when something is well-made versus when it was bought off the rack.” While the price point may not be an impediment to For You By You’s immediate growth, a dearth of technical talent might be. “Right now seamstresses can be hard to find, even here in L.A.,” Lima said. “Finding people who are good (sewers) is hard.” Established manufacturers face the same issue, according to Kirk. In his company’s experience, fashion interns have little interest in sitting at a sewing machine, even for decent pay. “(Fashion school graduates) want to be famous apparel designers,” he said. “The sewing jobs can start around $17 an hour, but it is hard work.” Lima thinks she may have a solution. If she cannot find the talent she needs, she will make it. “My vision for the business is … to actually educate new professionals,” she said. “I’d like to do a school for sewing.”