Tatiana Kozorovitsky is not only a leading voice in the fashion world; she is transforming the profession by making it accessible for all. Tatiana was the owner of her own wedding salon in the center of Tel Aviv in the past, but nowadays she is the founder of online fashion design school Dressmaking Academy in the USA, which provides the opportunity for everyone to learn the art of sewing. By teaching its students that high fashion is attainable both financially and skill-wise, Dressmaking Academy is helping its students follow their dreams.
From an early age, Tatiana Kozorovitsky had passion, an unshakable confidence, and a constant craving for knowledge. She also had a love of sewing that simply wouldn’t quit. “Despite my technical and mathematical education as a programmer, my head was always busy with models and sketches,” Tatiana said. “When I was painting and sewing, my soul was singing.”
Tatiana’s love for sewing inspired her to enroll in a prestigious three-year program covering cutting and sewing the same time that she entered the Faculty of Mathematics in 1984. At the end of her sewing program, she created her own wedding dress for her thesis. Continuing her education, she took machine embroidery courses from a famous master in the field and was a student at the Architectural University of Design and Interior for a year.
For Tatiana, however, the real “university” was at the fashion houses where she worked after moving to Israel. There, she learned all of the technological subtleties and grew from an ordinary seamstress to the hostess of a large salon in the center of Tel Aviv, on the most important wedding fashion street – Dizengoff.
It was at her salon that she first envisioned opening a sewing school. One day, she realized that she was unable to find qualified seamstresses that could sew unique and custom pieces for the salon. “I ended up deciding to teach my new seamstresses the skills to succeed,” Tatiana recalled. “This eventually gave me the idea to create an online school, and Dressmaking Academy was born.” Now a quickly-growing educational platform and community, Dressmaking Academy is inspiring dressmakers from all over the globe to pursue their passions. Indeed, the school boasts more than 90 thousand students from 168 countries! Students from the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, and Germany make up a large part of the school’s student body, and there is even a growing market in Nigeria. Currently, Tatiana is working with her son and business partner, Vladimir Kozorovitsky, to make the site accessible to Spanish-speakers as well.
Dressmaking Academy aims to improve people’s lives by encouraging them to follow their dreams, whether students are beginners or established seamstresses. All you need to begin, Tatiana says, is “the Internet, a sewing machine, and a smile!” Beginners will be able to pick up skills quickly from Dressmaking Academy’s main program, through which they will learn how to make patterns and change them to fit any size. Through the process of making 6 garments from start to finish, Tatiana estimates that participants gain nearly 10 years of work experience.
For more established sewers, the school offers equally transformative lessons. In addition to the main program, Dressmaking academy contains more than 50 courses, and this number is constantly growing as the site puts out new exciting material. Courses include subjects such as styles, skirts, leather corsets, decorating methods, drapery, children’s clothing, clothes for larger and smaller wearers, short and tall items, sewing business steps, and much more.
Perhaps the most unique and impressive part of Dressmaking Academy is the community it provides for its students. The intra-school community aims to unite students and create a setting for shared experiences. Each member of the academy can receive the support they need in the community, which already boasts hundreds of users despite its recent creation. There is even a section called “Ask Tatiana,” in which students can communicate their questions directly to Tatiana herself.
In her aim to make dressmaking accessible for all, Tatiana prices Dressmaking Academy so that one completed wedding dress pays for a lifetime’s access to the entire library of courses. Currently, you can buy lifetime access to the library for two thousand dollars or get a subscription for just $97 per month. The school has the largest library of professional courses on this subject in the world and, as their library is constantly growing, the subscription’s value grows. From the very first garment you make, your full investment pays off.
The program contains knowledge that can even benefit masters in the field, as it provides access to some of Tatiana’s acclaimed, groundbreaking techniques. Traditionally, clients would have to undergo four or five fittings, but Tatiana has developed a process through which she reduced the number of fittings her clients need into one. Moreover, Tatiana developed a program that drastically cuts the time needed for pattern creation. “I adapt a set of standard-size patterns to each individual client within a matter of seconds using a program I developed myself,” Tatiana told us. “I automated the process for the convenience of my clients.” Tatiana’s innovative processes and techniques, which add efficiency and increase customer happiness, are available to the students of Dressmaking Academy and can benefit new students as well as accomplished masters in the field.
Above all, Tatiana finds joy in watching her students succeed. Some of the students sew dresses for themselves for fun, others open their own courses and train their newly minted sewing masters, and some sew incredible pieces for celebrities! Photos of hundreds of astounding outfits created by students adorn the fashion school’s site. Tatiana can’t wait to see what they accomplish next. After all, for the students at Dressmaking Academy, the possibilities are endless.
