Venus Dancewear fills an important niche for women who compete in a few competitions a year and either can't or don't want to spend $6,000-plus on couture gowns, but recognize that practice gowns for competition are not appropriate. I ordered my first Venus gown after spending many, many thousands on couture and was pleasantly surprised. Is it couture? No. But it was a fraction of the cost, so I'm happy for a very nice extra dress that fits absolutely perfectly. One word of note: The estimated production times on the website are optimistic at best - I ordered my dress with no changes (except for the upgrade to Swarovski crystals) and it took 55 business days rather than the 5 to 15 indicated in the dress description/headline. To the company's credit, they shipped it DHL and I had it from Hong Kong to the U.S. in 2 days without my even asking. LSS: four stars for a well-fitting, very nice dress at an excellent price; one star removed for lack of clarity on production time.