fredlet’s Igigi review

I had the luxury of test driving several Igigi dresses recently.
I have an hourglass figure, however, I am rather foreshortened so most dresses tend to make me look like a potato despite my actually having a defined waistline. The fact that I wear different sized tops than pants/skirts tends to ensure a dress either fits on top or bottom, but not both. It’s a bit dispiriting to say the least.
Try a skirt with the shirt tucked in, you say? I look like Ed Grimley when I do that. No thanks.
I know that many of my friends of widely varied body types and sizes have had pretty much universal success with the Igigi dresses so I thought I’d give it a try. On advice from Wendy, I chose the Francesca dress.
V-necks work well for me, the skirt part was a bit longer which works with my extra leg length (I am long legged for my height, shortest torso ever though…) the only thing I thought might be an issue was the empire waist as in the past they have been problematic.
They were out of my originally guestimated size (see their size/measuring chart), though frankly, I think that I was in between sizes so it turned out to be in my favor moving to the next range up.
When I tried on the dress I was amazed.
Seriously.
I’m not a girly girl, I will wear a dress when needed but really I am all about outdoor wear. Part of the reason I hate wearing girl clothes is that most of them require you to be trapped in a girdle, have your boobs served up on a platter or don’t allow for any variation of the female form for dresses to flow well. All of that adds up to being uncomfortable the entire time you are wearing a dress.
The Igigi dress looked amazing from the minute I tried it on even without “foundation” garments… which I refuse to wear. (Though I did wear a slip when I put it on for the evening to make certain I wouldn’t have lines-not that I would have, the dress is fully lined.) Enough cleavage without making me uncomfortable, the empire waist settled into my own waist without being floppy (the waistline wasn’t an issue at all since Igigi actually expects women to have boobs and designs accordingly), the flow of the skirt was elegant all on its own… and it was comfortable. I was a little astonished.
You know how you see dresses on models but you put the same dress on and it looks nothing like the picture on the web? This did not happen.
Then I tried on the other 2 dresses and had the same success with both of them as well. 3 in a row? Crazy talk!

Here’s what I tried:

Dress 1: Francesca in black
Their model in the dress.	Me in the dress:
© IGIGI, Inc. 2011. All rights reserved.
Dress 2: Boulangerie in Richelieu blue
Their model in the dress.	Me in the dress:
© IGIGI, Inc. 2011. All rights reserved.
Dress 3: Isobel in garnet
Their model in the dress.	Me in the dress:
© IGIGI, Inc. 2011. All rights reserved.

I had to update my pictures to ones taken in daylight  (it wasn’t Jorie’s fault that I chose all dark dresses…heh. The other photos didn’t let you see the detail of the garments… also my hair was atrocious.) but I like the fact that my awesome boots work with all the dresses rather than requiring heels.
And nary a potato in sight.
I also hear from Wendy that these dresses travel really well. I have an Eagle Creek packing envelope that I used to bring these home and when I pulled the dresses out from it they still looked perfect. This bodes well for business as well as personal travel as I don’t tend to do high maintenance clothing.
I don’t know if I am adequately expressing just how cool I think these dresses are, I was setting my expectations (as I normally do with dresses) to be a little disappointed at the divide between how well things fit the beautiful models on the website/catalog/what have you and what it looks like on me. Also that it didn’t take 5 people to put me into a dress what with all the straps and buttons that normally are required for dresses. I wasn’t disappointed and oh, isn’t that nice?

Here’s the fun part, Igigi wants to give a lucky winner chosen randomly from comments here a $50 gift certificate! De-lurk yourself for this one, babe, its worth it! Comments will be closed  THU April 7th and I will use the fabulous WordPress plug-in written by Jennette to determine the random winner (and will post here after). One entry per person on this post, thanks!

Good luck to you all!

[Oh and just for full disclosure, I got to take these dresses home. But my opinions are all my own… like you can tell me anything anyway. Thank you IGIGI!] 

======THE WINNER=====

The winner on “fredlet’s Igigi review” is:

Laurie Ann

I love all of the clothes — so beautiful and modern! Then I perused the accessory section — oh my! I love the Regalia Champagne Hard Body Clutch — a must-have.
Submitted on 2011/04/01 at 12:32 pm

Congratulations!
We’ll coordinate with Igigi to get you your gift certificate