The face behind THE gowns

Hello ladies, My name is Toni Jeffrey. I am 31 years old and I am a mother to a beautiful little boy called Lucas. I was born in Harold wood, Essex and moved up to the north west when I was in primary school and have lived in Walton-le-dale, Preston ever since. I have been a dressmaker for a decade now, and some of you reading this may be here because you have followed my first company, Haus of JB through the years and now are happily engaged and bridesmaid dress shopping?! Amazing if so! I started making prom dresses in 13'/14' and the internal pride I felt from seeing clients ready for prom in dresses that I made was indescribable and I knew I wanted to take it further and get into the wedding industry. I think I made my first official bridesmaid order in 2018 and when I got the pictures back, wow! There was no doubt this was what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life.

WHERE IT STARTED

It has been quite a journey over the 9 years that I have been a dressmaker. And I could not imagine ever being in any other profession. Designing and sewing dresses is my dream and has been since I left university. This all started as a hobby while I was in university studying marketing management with fashion, in a bid to one day pursue a career in marketing. I was a skint student, and really struggled to find 'out out' outfits that would fit my figure (a figure I would kill to be reunited with right now) so I thought maybe I could make myself dresses? surely it can't be that hard?? So I begged my mum for a sewing machine for christmas, she caved, then I must have spent the next week or two staring at the box thinking OMG MY MUM IS GOING TO KILL ME, WHO AM I KIDDING I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING!!?? But eventually out it came, and all of a sudden I just felt happy, I had no clue how to work this machine but the idea of teaching myself from scratch filled me with excitement and I couldn't wait to get started.

how its going

So after weeks of practicing on my machine, following every 'how to' tutorial on youtube I was actually starting to pick it up. I was starting to understand how to read and make patterns, I was picking up the terminology and the first ever dress was made. Quite poorly I will admit but we all have to start somewhere and I just kept going. I was making myself and friends dresses, and we would post my makes on social media and quite quickly the response became overwhelming and ladies I didn't know were asking 'can I buy this?' I thought WOW someone wants to purchase something I have made?? after a couple of months of improving my finished pieces I took the plunge and started a company and developed my first ever collection. 9 years on, over 25,000 individual items of clothing and sewn from dresses, swimwear, festival wear and gowns. Now here we are my own official bridesmaid company, specialising in made to measure gowns and I can not wait to go on this journey with all of you bride-to-be's