So I’ve been pondering and working on a project for a few months now.

I live in France and have some friends, including my girlfriend, that are aristocracy, and not the lowish kind. I am not, for full disclosure.

The idea I’ve been working on, is a specialised tailoring business that would offer for free hand made 1910-50 era female dresses (at first at least) based of vintage sewing patterns I’ve collected.

You may raise some eyebrows about why for free. How do you make money ?

The idea is to target this very well off niche customers audience, at their parties my friends are invited at, by gifting the ladies small specialised accessories easy made but pretty such as hair ribbons, collar ribbons, scarves to raise awareness about the brand and services, then offer them a taylor made dress. We ask for no fee, but to simply pay any amount they want, depending on how they are satisfied and their possibilities (it’s also a matter of dignity in the culture of the social group). It’s a bit unreliable financially I admit, but it’s the best way to enter the niche market at first in my opinion, those people don’t lack taylored clothes.

It will make some money, but the point is to get a network of the highest grade.

My problem is that although I have all the tools and materials, I have no expertise on sewing much less tayloring. The best case scenario would be to get in touch with one that would be interested in collaborating, but don’t know one.

My girlfriend knows a bit and she did make a few dress on her own but she not really keen on fulfilling orders as a job.

Is learning this skill on my own to get this to a satisfactory level worth the time, or should I take my time to find a collaborator directly preferable? Or should I just work on something else and drop it altogether ?