Five things you didn't know about Desiree Spice fashion design

A woman who designs clothing for people all over the world has headquarters in tiny Rives Township, north of Jackson.

Desiree Ferraro, whose maiden name is Spice, creates couture wedding dresses, formal gowns and hats for people from as far away as North Carolina, California, Hawaii, Canada, Australia and Germany. One of her main clients is a princess from Saudi Arabia.

"This is my passion," Ferraro said. "The fabric is my canvas and I let it speak to me by the way it moves and drapes."

Most of Ferrero's business comes from phone calls, email and the website etsy.com.

Ferraro, 26, spent a year studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. She later studied in Paris for a month, where she learned couture skills. She has one assistant: seamstress Debbie Mesick.

photo: vintage formal dresses

Following are five things you didn't know about Desiree Spice of Rives Township:

• A fashion designer is much different from being a seamstress, because of the additional creativity involved, Ferraro said. "Someone will call me and they'll say they want a custom-made wedding dress," she said. "They'll send me pictures or they'll tell me the sorts of things they're looking for. Then I'll sketch up the designs, go over it with them with fabric options and things like that."
• Ferraro has designed six wedding dresses in the past year. Prices start at $1,500. "Usually my clients will give me a budget and then I will work with them in that budget." She said the average price of her wedding dresses is about $3,000. Almost all of her wedding dresses have built-in corsets, a feature that most other designers do not offer, she said.
• Clients will be pleased with her work, Ferraro said, because her dresses are "couture," which means fashionable and made-to-fit. "My dresses are not off the rack," she said. "You're going to go to a store, you're going to look for a wedding dress, and if you find that perfect wedding dress, it's not going to fit right. My dresses are 100 percent custom made to each individual client's bodies, and, of course, their styles. Couture requires lots of hand sewing."
• Originally from Jackson, Ferraro started sewing when she was 7. She said there was a stuffed Eeyore donkey in a store that she wanted, but her parents wouldn't buy it for her. "So I went home and made it and I was like, 'Oh, hey, I can sew.' When I was 9, I started making clothes for Barbies. Then when I was 16, I made my first formal gown for a customer, and when I was 17, I made my first wedding gown."
• In addition to making dresses, Ferraro sells custom-made hats, fascinators, bridal veils and birdcage veils. She said she is currently designing 45 peppermint-glitter headpieces for a high school performance in California.

see also: school formal dresses online

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