Hearts and Roses London Review

Let me start this off by saying I normally don't buy clothing. I hate the process of trying things on, but perhaps I hate the process of blind buying a product online even more so! With the absence of a change room, I'm leaving it 100% up to chance as to whether or not a garment bought online will fit, and I'm a terribly unlucky type who usually ends up with something completely nonreturnable and unwearable.


I went on a shopping binge when I discovered cheap dresses on Zulily. I knew of the brand Hearts and Roses London, but I had never bought anything from them before. Because they're based in the UK I always felt that their prices and shipping were too steep - and while they do have a US store, it's still a bit too much at $64.88 a dress plus $40 shipping totaling $104.88 USD ($138.87 CAD). Yikes. So when I found their dresses on Zulily for $14 CAD a piece with a $5 flat rate shipping, I just about lost my damn mind.

I'm sure these dresses are defective in some way, or maybe they're overstock, or last seasons' styles (actually you'll find many of their current stock on Zulily right now), but there has got to be a reason why they're being offered at a fraction of their retail price. I honestly don't care. So far what I've received has been fine, aside from a few construction problems. At $20 CAD a dress, sometimes only $13 if you get the free shipping deal, it's not the kind of loss that will break you. Which is why I've come back to buy these dresses several times from Zulily.

However, it's not all hearts and roses. As you'll read next.


Hearts and Roses London 
Sunflower Swing Dress Review

I'm not going to write a review about Zulily here, that can be another post, I'll forewarn anyone interested in using them that the process is not without it's problems. Today I want to write about the most recent purchase I made, which is the Hearts and Roses London Sunflower Swing Dress. One thing I can say with H&R London is that construction is not their forté. The fabrics are quite nice, but the way the dresses fit the body are sometimes just plain bizarre. I've seen one or two reviewers complaining about H&R London dresses not fitting correctly. I'm willing to bet that these dresses don't fit most buyers, and people probably aren't even aware of it because they don't know what to look for. But I sew, so I know when something is off, and with this particular dress the sleeves were way off. Like not even on my shoulders, they were pretty much floating off into outer-space.

As you can see from this product photo above, the baby cap sleeve sticks out from the shoulder seam and kind of hangs there. It causes the sleeve to look too big for the garment, and for a woman with broad shoulders it made me feel way uncomfortable. It kind of reminded me of the gear that football players wear. My husband noticed it immediately as well, I believe his words were "it's unfortunate." What was also unfortunate was that it fit everywhere but my back. I knew I had to get rid of the sleeves first and foremost. What followed was several hours of tailoring, this was not an easy fix and not something I could recommend for beginners. To be fair, I've altered every H&R London dress I've bought so far, but it's been tiny things like removing skirt length or altering the neckline shape. For this alteration I had to open up the back neckline seam, remove almost 3" of excess fabric into a back dart, which obviously lead to removing the same excess material from the back neck facing. I removed the sleeves and changed the shoulder slope, then I had to apply a bias bound facing to the new armscye because strangely enough only half of the front and back bodice were lined. Because the fabric is fray-prone, I had no choice but to bias bind the entire armhole, but I otherwise would have opened the neck facings and enclosed the armhole inside; this could only be done if it had been completely lined... and it wasn't, so frustration ensued. I just bought a similar dress for my mother and it has the same whack-a-doodle, semi faced neckline, only the construction of hers looks a lot like how mine ended up looking. Think about this - a faced neckline that also has to be bias bound into the armhole?! Those of you reading this who happen to sew are likely cringing right now.

I'm happy with how it looks (photo at the top of post). I know that not every garment is going to fit me like a glove, but those. damn. puff. sleeves. Knowing how shitty they were to rectify, I probably won't buy a dress like this again, which is sad because most of the H&R London dresses have these sleeves?!

Please do not buy this dress if a floating puff sleeve is going to be a problem for you. It's not an easy alteration to make if you do sew. If you don't sew, you might want to take it to a seamstress and have it altered for you, but it's to your discretion if it's worth the cost, on one hand Zulily makes the dress super affordable so you can justify an extra $20+ alteration, on the other hand because it's so cheap you might not want to invest in an alteration at all! I just sympathize with anyone who paid full price for this dress because it is definitely not worth $140, it's not worth $65, but it is worth $20 CAD, so get it on sale.