Behind the Scenes of the Merrick White Collection

It’s the Merrick White Collection two year anniversary! We’re having a special birthday sale, and I’m taking you behind the scenes a little bit.

The MW Collection Anniversary Sale!

Today is the two year anniversary for my clothing collection, the Merrick White Collection! We have a celebratory sale happening over on our site today, so definitely hop over and check that out!

But over here, I wanted to share a little behind the scenes about the last three years.

Creating a clothing line has been one of the most challenging, frustrating, exciting, and rewarding things I’ve ever done.

Three years ago, we decided to move into creating our own products. I really felt like there was (and still is) a pretty significant gap in the market for high quality women’s everyday dresses that were comfortable, offered enough coverage, and were flattering.

So I designed a line of dresses with this goal in mind.

My first collection was 6 dresses, each with a different style, print, or color. We worked with a factory in California to make the dresses, and then right as we were about to begin production, we moved to Dallas.

I spent the next six months flying back and forth from Dallas to California to make sure everything went smoothly. Of course, it didn’t all go smoothly, because that’s the way things go, but we did our best.

I spent months agonizing over the fabric, the colors, the fit, the styles…everything was thought out and overthought, all with you in mind.

I’ll never forget the moment that I saw the Collection dresses on a model for the first time. I’d personally tried them on during fittings and adjustments, but it was a completely different experience to see them on a model.

I cried. It was magical.

Often, when I refer to the brand as “us” or “we,” I get questions about who that refers to. We have a tiny team — my husband, our social media and customer service manager, our production manager, and me. We’re also hiring a new project manager next month!

There’s been a huge learning curve for me, and trying to balance all of the demands of a clothing collection on top of my work on the blog and social media for Merrick’s Art has been extremely challenging for me.

But seeing women all over the country, in Canada, and even a few around the world who have gotten their hands on our dresses, has been incredibly rewarding. I love seeing you work, teach, play, explore, worship, mother, and lounge in these comfortable dresses.

We have several new pieces in the works and I cannot wait to share them with you over the coming months!

But in the meantime, go enjoy the sale, and here’s a few behind the scenes photos.

At each fitting, our pattern maker marked all the adjustments with safety pins 

For our striped dress, we had to decide on the width and size of the stripes. These were a few options.

Lap dips for color sampling

The first look at our strike off fabric – it was even better than I imagined!

All six of our first collection dresses

A thumbs up at one of the fittings at the California factory

Some of the pictures from our first collection photoshoot

In December 2019, we launched our winter collection, with two buttery soft, heavy knit Christmas dresses. 

In February 2021, after a quiet year of production during the pandemic, we launched my favorite dress to date — the Navy Polka Dot dress.

All of the dresses are on sale this weekend to celebrate our anniversary!

Thank you so much for the support and love you’ve shown the MWC brand over the last two years — happy Anniversary to us!

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