The walls of 400 Jefferson St. are lined with brightly colored fabrics, some adorned with sequins and beads, expertly sewn into unique dresses and other clothing items that buyers won’t find elsewhere.
Much of the clothing on display there is designed and made by Sarah Hall, who opened Sarah Alexandria Bridal Boutique and Alterations in October 2021 after more than a decade of doing alterations and custom orders from her home.
There are wedding and prom dresses, some ordered and others the product of Hall’s imagination, and other dresses, pants and sweatshirts designed with comfort, convenience and style in mind.
“The majority of these are very soft. They’re like pajama-wear,” Hall told The Hawk Eye Thursday while working to fasten a clasp to a mauve garment. “And another thing about a lot of my dresses are they have pockets in them. If they can have pockets, I put the pockets in there.”
To the delight of many a customer, those pockets are deep.
“Nobody wants to wear a purse,” Hall explained. “They want to put their stuff in their pocket and go.”
Hall keeps a vigilant eye out for unique prints, including one featuring Chuckie from horror movie “Child’s Play” that she used to make both a sweatshirt and her Halloween costume. There are dresses with donuts and others with swirling sequins and thigh slits. There also are creatively matched tops and skirts.
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How a teacher, a magazine cover and a pandemic inspired a career in fashion design
The Burlington native’s infatuation with fashion design began in ninth grade at Burlington High School with an Intro to Sewing class and words of encouragement from teacher Paula Logan.
“She told me that if nobody did anything with sewing then I had to. I didn’t have a choice. She made me do it,” Hall said with a laugh. “I didn’t really think (I had a knack for sewing), but she thought so.”
Hall still has her first project: a backless shirt inspired by one worn by Hillary Duff on the cover of a Cosmo magazine. The design was complex for a beginner, but neither Hall nor Logan found that to be a reason not to try.
“I was like, ‘Mrs. Logan, I want to make this,’ and she was like, ‘You’ve got all these crazy ideas, but we’ll figure it out,’ so we made it,” Hall recalled.
After graduating high school in 2007, Hall went on to Western Illinois University to study fashion, but the only program offered was fashion merchandizing. Wanting instead to pursue a career in design, Hall left after one semester.
She and her husband spent a brief stint in Rockford, Illinois, before moving to Colorado but returned to Burlington to be near family. All the while, Hall continued to design and sew her own clothes.
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She launched her at-home business, Sarah Hall Unique Designs, 12 years ago doing alterations and custom designs, but the idea of having her own storefront seemed like a pipe dream.
“I suppose I thought that I could never really afford having my own shop, so I never took the leap to try,” Hall said.
She was working at Starbucks when the pandemic took hold, forcing business closures and creating an unprecedented need for masks.
Restrictions on large gatherings and quarantine measures slowed alteration orders to a standstill. Instead, local demand quickly shifted to masks.
“There’d be people at my door being like, ‘you got those masks?’ ” Hall said with a laugh. “At that point, none of the stores had the masks, so it was just me and a handful of other ladies doing it (locally).”
Each mask took Hall about 10 minutes to complete. That time added up quickly, and Hall found herself toiling away at her sewing machine from 10 to 2 a.m. most days to complete a total of upwards of 5,200 masks.
As the face coverings flew out her door, donations poured in, adding up to about $20,000.
“I was kind of shocked and amazed by it,” Hall said.
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With that money, Hall had what she needed to secure a downtown storefront and signed a lease for the space at the corner of Fourth and Jefferson streets, where prom and wedding dresses displayed on mannequins now catch the eyes of passersby and attract new clients.
“There weren’t any dress stores here, and I’m different because I do the design half of it also, so I just thought it would be something Burlington kind of needed,” Hall said.
The opening her storefront was a significant milestone for Hall.
Growing up in Burlington, she said, Black-owned businesses and people of color in professional positions were far and few between.
“I think for me, it’s just like having Black teachers in school,” she said as her daughter did school work in the store’s sewing room and her son napped in her office. “As we were in school growing up, there weren’t many Black teachers at all or many Black businesses, so as a kid, you feel like that’s something that you can’t do because nobody else is doing it. You just see all the white, white, white.
“Everybody who does something is white. All the Black people are working in factories and stuff like that, and I guess for me, I never wanted to work in a factory because my parents worked in a factory for 30 years and I wanted to do something that I liked. I wanted to want to go to work and not have to dread going to work, so for me the importance of being a Black-owned business is teaching my daughter that she can do what she wants.”
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A basement full of prom dresses
The first year was a whirlwind. She sold four wedding dresses, ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to $2,000, and did countless alterations and designs for prom dresses, none of which exceed $280.
Prom season, she said, was a particularly trying time.
“I would start working at 2 in the morning and get done until 11 at night and do it all over again,” Hall said, explaining she often brings her work home with her. “The basement was just full of prom dresses.”
Hall also orders dresses from distributors with quick shipping times for those not wanting a custom-made piece, and she often orders several styles for customers to try on.
“A lot of the dresses that I order, they only take four days to come in, which is wonderful, so if you have a very indecisive teenager, they need to let me know within six days and we’re good,” she said.
Orders for designed- and made-from-scratch prom dresses, however, were cut off for this year in December.
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‘I got you’: Boosting confidence with the right fit
Despite the oftentimes hectic nature of her business, Hall still refers to her work as a “made-up job,” because it’s one she loves.
She gets up at 4 a.m. to start work before her children wake up and continues to work as she can, meeting with clients for consults by appointment and chipping away at orders throughout the day.
Some clients are in need of alterations like shoring up hems or adding sleeves to wedding dresses, while others come to her with ideas for something entirely new in mind.
“I just go off the pictures, and then they come try it on and whatever they want tweaked, we tweak it, and then we go from there,” Hall said. “There’s lots of girls who are like, ‘I like this bottom but I want this top and I like this fabric but I want this’.”
Whatever their request, Hall’s response is the same: “I got you.”
Her work has been a focal point at weddings, school dances and dance recitals. She still finds the occasional feather shed by boas she used to make costumes recently completed for Ignite Dance Studio’s performance inspired by the movie, “Rio,” dotting her showroom floor.
Her work has also been showcased in local and state drag shows, including an iridescent full-length gown worn by a 2022 Miss Gay Iowa contestant from Burlington who won the pageant recently held in Ames.
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Hall is working with the winner to create an additional three dresses that will be worn in a competition in Dallas this summer. Other pieces of hers were on display this weekend at a local drag show.
“The ideas that (drag show participants) come up with are out of this world, but I think I like doing their stuff the most because I like the costume design of it,” Hall said.
Additionally, some of the drag performers Hall makes clothes for are her size.
“There’s a couple of queens who are about the same size as me, which is really nice, so I just kind of make it to fit me and it fits them perfectly,” Hall said.
While Hall is well-versed in sizing of all body types, she measures each of her clients to make sure they’re getting the perfect fit so they feel confident in their clothing.
Hall usually is at her store from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. Beyond that, Sarah Alexandria Bridal Boutique and Alterations is open by appointment and by chance.
To schedule an appointment, call (319) 850-6615.
Michaele Niehaus covers business, development, environment and agriculture for The Hawk Eye. She can be reached at mniehaus@thehawkeye.com.
