Poya Boutique

I recently went to a boutique called Poya Boutique at Empire to get some tailoring done for my sister's upcoming wedding. My mother loves their signature 'ballroom kebaya', so we'd often passed by the store and decided to get our stuff tailored there.

The staff were lovely and quick, and informed us that it would usually take a couple of weeks for our clothes to be finished, and they would call us after. As promised, they called us around the two week mark to let us know that our clothes were done, and my sister and I went in for our initial fitting.

My kebaya was cut in a way that caused the material to crease at the part where the armpit meets the body, and therefore needed some minor alteration. My sister's baju kurung also needed some minor alterations. They re-measured me and subsequently sent the clothes back to be altered.

When I came back for the second fitting, my sister's baju kurung was perfect. My kebaya had some improvements but the strange creases were still there. The lady asked if she could take a photo to show their tailors, as their tailor is mainly based at the Bangsar store. She said it was sometimes difficult to conceptualize the explanation of what had gone wrong, and it was often easier to show them a photo.

Throughout this while, they were unfailingly polite towards me, and I was fairly relieved at the level of concern they seemed to take with my clothes. However, it had taken awhile, and I was starting to be concerned if they would be able to fix it properly the second time.

I was surprised then, when my mother told me she had received a call from the owner of the boutique, who apologized for the problems with the tailoring, and suggested I come in so she could bring me straight to her tailor and get the kebaya fixed there and then.

I agreed and an appointment was set up.

I wasn't entirely sure who the owner was and I wasn't sure what to expect. After the past incident with my sister's designer, I was slightly wary.

I definitely didn't expect the beautiful, fresh faced girl who walked in right on time, with the biggest smile on her face.

Adilah apparently runs the boutique with her mother, and immediately made me feel right at home with her friendly attitude and a gregarious personality. She's one of those people who is hard not to like, and her constant chatter put me at ease immediately. She had come onboard to Poya Boutique a couple of years ago, but had grown up with the family business and worked other jobs prior to joining forces with her mother.

We'd gone to their Petaling Jaya workshop, where I was measured and the kebaya was altered in order to rectify the previous mistake. Adilah even took me out to lunch while they made the alterations - and it was finally perfect.

It was obvious from talking to her that Adilah and her mother cared a lot for the brand and their customers, and spent a lot of time personally scouring different countries for fabrics and other things.

It makes a difference when a business owner goes through the extra mile in order to fix a problem for a client - in this case, it was a situation which I didn't even expect that sort of treatment, and I feel it is a reflection of the passion that Adilah has put into her business and her belief that the satisfaction of her customers should never be compromised.

I walked out of that experience feeling very much like I had gotten the star treatment - and naturally, it is not surprising that I will definitely be back again at Poya, knowing that the quality of the service is such.

Poya is located at Bangsar Shopping Centre and Empire Gallery. For more information, please visit www.poya.com.my.

An Experience with A Designer: NM

My sister was recently engaged, and as engagements go, it is always a beautiful affair for family involved. 

There is so much that occurs in the process of planning an engagement or a wedding, and hers was no different - especially considering how she had very specific ideas about how she wanted things to be.

She chose to have a dress made for the occasion, and picked a designer at random called N.M based on a suggestion from our well-meaning aunt. She was impressed by the sketches that were produced at the first session based on what she wanted, picked a design that she liked and put down a deposit for said dress.

She and her fiancé then decided to have her shoes made by Ms M. Unfortunately she didn't have the same luck as she had with a dress and her designer suggested that she email over some sketches for consideration, and my sister could then pick and choose designs that she liked and the process would follow on from there.

Weeks passed and my sister received no word from the designer, despite a couple of reminders about her shoes, which was always followed up with a promise to email through some sketches.

The engagement neared, and after multiple calls, a date was finally set for the first fitting, after my sister's insistence.

Ms M cancelled at short notice twice for the fitting, once the night before and once a couple of hours after the scheduled fitting, with minimal apology - after my sister had specifically taken the day off to fit around Ms M's schedule.

Third time's the charm supposedly, but as she was driving to the boutique after work, she received a text from Ms M asking for the fitting to be pushed back a couple of hours. While frustrated, nevertheless she agreed to the request and had dinner with her fiancé at the surrounding venue.

Ms M finally arrived and texted her, to which my sister informed her that she was currently having dinner and would be in shortly.

As my sister idly played with her phone, she noticed Ms M's immediate Tweet: Putain putain putain.

"What in eternity?"

For those inclined, putain is a French swear word; while in traditional French it refers to a whore, it is colloquially used as the word fuck.

She and her fiance finished dinner and walked into her boutique, where Ms M and her mother were present, and she immediately asked for an explanation.

As expected, Ms M backpedalled. "It's French."

"I know it's French, and I know what it means ."

"What does it mean?"

"It means whore."

"No it doesn't," she said, dropping voice down as she cast a furtive glance to her mother, "It means the f-word."

Regardless, a long conversation ensued, with Ms M's mother jumping in and apologizing for her daughter's behaviour and the miscommunication between them. She apologized for the delay, and informed them that they were currently understaffed.

Max, my sister's fiance was the voice of reason, and he told her they understood, but it was important to communicate this to their clients, because they had no idea what was happening.

On top of that, the dress wasn't even there, and hadn't been finished apparently due to the staffing problem.

In any case, my sister and Max left, after arranging another date for a fitting.

It would have all blown over - until the series of Tweets that night. Tweets being angry at my sister, accusing her of swearing in front of her mother (apparently talking about the meaning of the French word whore constitutes as swearing), and personal attacks about her character (Ms M had one through the effort of actually contacting my sister's old coursemate for a proper bitchfest), in addition to mentions in her personal blog, which was personally upsetting for my sister.

For those inclined, my sister spent four years of UITM as a mass comm student where she graduated top of her class and received the Deans Award, at the cost of choosing to befriend those from the debate society as opposed to the rest of the mass communication students, to which she was considered antisocial and friendless by other mass communication students. In those four years, she travelled extensively to represent UITM in debate competitions and represented Malaysia in several youth conferences in the environment.

But I digress - that is just a sister's overprotective slap in your face.

In any case, when the fitting finally came around, my sister rocked up with a couple of her friends, and I'd turned up with my mum to pay for the dress.

It was awful.

Not quite a disaster, but my sister has curves, and the particular cut of her dress meant that it had to be cut particularly well - which it was not, and ended up making her look fat. I saw the helpless look on my sister's face, and I knew she didn't know how exactly to communicate her distress without possibly starting a whole new barrage of online warfare.

The corset was bigger, with a visible zip, and upon our request to change it into an invisible zip, Ms M kept insisting that there was no way of doing that.

The lace that was chosen for the kebaya top had been cut incorrectly so the actual kebaya didn't quite balance, and was slightly longer on one side as opposed to the other.

In addition, the train of the skirt was about probably 6 inches longer than it was meant to be.

Whenever we asked her for constructive criticism, she kept saying that it looked fine from the comfort of her chair, and was totally uninterested to the point that she had to be asked directly to make changes. She kept insisting that the changes we wanted couldn't be made either.

It may not sound like much, but when you are being charged RM800 just for tailoring, I think a client has a right to want her dress to look perfect, and at least feel as if her designer or tailor has some interest in making sure that she is emphatic to how her client feels.

When my sister went back for her second fitting, not much had changed, and my sister chose to take her clothes to a second tailor to be fixed - which was done perfectly and without complaints.

Ms M may have made a name for herself in the small industry of Malaysian designers, she may make some beautiful clothes and she may have the skill and the claim that she has worked with the house of Elie Saab.

However, her attitude towards those who may not be considered high fliers in Malaysian society or potential clients leaves me a little cold towards her. 

She is new and yet lacks communication with her clients, and doesn't seem to believe that her clients wants and needs seem to account for much. Even though she may have been frustrated at a client, it was not professional to attack them personally or to reach out to a mutual friend in order to get information about that client, in this case my sister.

The world is small enough that people have come to me and dished out dirt about her past about her family, her life in France and her life in high school, but there is no need for any of us to splash that around.

I can only hope that her attitude changes in the future, and she learns a little more professionalism along the way. 

13th April 2011 - This post has been edited to shorten the name of the designer due to threatening messages I have received from said designer's affiliates. However, I refuse to take down this post on the basis that all I have said is true - I will address any confusions regarding the content in the comments below.