For a long time the term ‘design your own fashion’ suggested one of two extremes: either the wacky printed t-shirts that people order for family reunions, bucks night, and amateur sports teams, or the ultimate made-to-measure experience, the wedding gown and suit.

Over the past few years, customised fashion has evolved from being a special occasion extravagance, to becoming another option for savvy shoppers, when off-the-rack just doesn’t cut it.

The D-Y-O trend seems to have started in the sneaker freak community, when in 2006 Adidas re-launched its 1983 adicolor White range. The fashion media picked up on the novelty value of blank-canvas white trainers and tracksuits that came packaged with spray cans, paints, and a rainbow of coloured laces to encourage some hands-on personalisation. The following year Nike followed suits with NIKEiD, an online service that allowed anyone to create their own shoes, clothes and merchandise, given a range of fabrics, colours and logo designs.

The D-I-Y element of D-Y-O is a great alternative for those who want something unique, but lack the time or tools to create their own garments from scratch. Now there are a range of online fashion options available that can offer garments with in-bulit customising capabilities, services to virtually design an entire garment from scratch, and individual customisation for existing clothing.

American Apparel

American Apparel kicked off the customisable fashion wear trend with the still-popular ’15-ways’ dress, whose simple jersey design can be wrapped, folded and tied into 15 different bandeau, halter and skirt-only styles. Their “Ways To Wear” range now includes 48 pieces including dresses, skirts and accessories, all that can be modified to the wearer’s tastes.

Price: Ways to Wear dresses range from €38

http://americanapparel.net/

Berber Soepboer & Michiel Schuurman

Dutch fashion graduate Berber Soepboer teamed up with graphic designer Michiel Schuurman in 2008, to take the process of customisation a step further with their 2 signature pieces: The Colour-In Dress & The Replacement Dresses.

The Colour-In Dress is a retro style shift with a bold black & white graphic pattern, that is sold with a packet of coloured textile markers, and the wearer is encourage to create their own unique garment by filling in the white spaces with the markers.

The Replacement Dresses consist of three dresses, all printed with a different multicoloured design. Each dress is made of several pieces, all of which are attached to each other using buttons, and all the pieces can be exchanged between the three dresses for extra colourful and unique results.

Price: Colour-In Dress €238

http://berbersoepboer.nl/

Style Shake

A comprehensive website that offers a mind-boggling range of options to help users create their own dresses, shirts or skirts.

A multi-stage questionnaire pieces together the design, determining the type of garment, type of fabric, neckline style and hem length, as well as more details like sleeve and bodice types, skirt shapes and belts. On top of that the trimmings section allows you to add collars, bows, pleats, frills, straps, feathers and corsages to your heart’s content.

The paper doll visual style puts your creative talents to work, and is a great way to see how your fantasy outfit might look as a finished product. There is also the option to scroll through, buy and modify other users’ best designs to your own tastes, and your own specific measurements.

Price: simple jersey dresses start from €40

http://www.styleshake.com/

Make Me A Dress

This site does exactly what is says in its title, allowing users to create a frock using a small range of hand-drawn vintage-inspired design templates. Presented a cute flipbook style, you turn the pages to mix & match your preferred bodice and skirt shapes. Then, select your desired fabric from a range of new and vintage cottons, satins, silks and linens, throw it all in the shopping cart and a fab new dress will be dispatched to you in 48 hours.

Price: Complete dress £97.00 extra customisable options at extra cost

http://www.wix.com/alexandraking/makemeadress

Round London

Combining clothing customisation with a social message, Round London aims to eradicate the wastefulness of the commercial fashion industry, by using recycled or ethically produced materials in their designs.

Round also offer an individual customisation service, to give their customers’ old, unworn clothes some TLC, whether that be with a minor alteration, or by using the material for a complete redesign, based on one of their existing designs or utilising the customer’s design ideas.

Prices: Customising starts from £10/piece

http://www.roundlondon.co.uk/