Ruby + Swallow: Design your own fashion: {Unitedstyles}

Unitedstyles is a young company based in Shanghai - you can't get much more dynamic than being based in a city like that! Their head fashion designer is from New York, so this is the real deal. Basically how it works is this: you can sketch, colour and design your own dresses, tops and jackets just like a fashion designer would. Well maybe not quite just like a designer, but for those of us who have never done this type of thing, its pretty cool! You can then preview the design in 3D and if you like it, you can choose your size and it will be custom-made just for you.

Here are some trends an inspiration below from the site:

To show you how the process works, before you go and try it for yourself of course, we created our own little design. First you have to pick a style; you can choose from a number of different types of dresses and tops - they are based on designs from different countries. Look below at the huge number of options you have to choose from - it's really too awesome for words.

So we picked the Miami style - as its coming up to our Summer, this style of dress is perfect. We love the one-shoulder dress, its so on trend right now. After picking your style, you can choose different options between the neckline, trim and sleeve. They are quite subtle differences, but they really allow you to tailor-make your piece to what you like or don't like. We choose the one-shoulder neckline, with a poofy sleeve on one side and a band around the waist.

Then its onto colours and prints. You can either choose from solid colours or you can choose different prints. Basically you pick the colour/print you want and choose which part of the dress/top you want to add it to. We are still obsessed with the swallow-print trend, so we decided to go with that in a dark turquoise with an off-white waist band and hem trim. The awesome thing is that you can change the colour of the prints if you don't like the one that is suggested for you.

All in all, we thought this is an epic website - so unique and really on trend. If it wasn't for the exchange rate, we would probably be spending a lot more time on this site than our bank accounts would like! Unitedstyles was awarded as one of the Top 3 Most Innovative Companies in China, and in the Top 10 Most Innovative Fashion Companies Worldwide. The site does need a little updating though... many of the designs can't be rendered in 3D for viewing so that is rather annoying. We also thought that user should be able to make the prints larger or smaller depending on what they like - sometimes large prints aren't always what you are looking for in a piece of clothing. There is also a gallery of already-made clothes that people can go and buy (as opposed to designing them yourself first) - those range from $29 to $200. So starting at about R250 for us, these outfits are obviously not coming cheap!

We did love how you can purchase a gift voucher for a friend - what a fun and unique idea, right? See below some of the outfits that people have brought to reality - aren't they just stunning?