Tell me about the economics of bridal fashion
May 23, 2024 11:56 AM Subscribe
I am interested in the relationship between bridal designers and bridal shops and samples and orders. I have never been a bride or a bridesmaid or a bridal shop owner. What can you tell me?
This is purely a question of idle curiosity, I'm not planning to get into the business, so no information is particularly out of bounds. If there's an article out there explaining how it all works, I'm happy to have a link. There are just things I wonder about as I watch Say Yes to the Dress clips or walk by the bridal shop that's between my house and my bus stop.
A lot of bridal dresses are obviously *very* expensive to produce, yet a store like Kleinfeld's has an absolute zillion of them. Do they pay wholesale prices up front for the samples? Or accept them on loan from the designer and return them later? I know they don't carry every dress in every size (that's what the giant clips are for) but do they carry multiple size of samples? Can they decide what sizes they want their samples in?
What about smaller bridal shops like the tiny one near my house? They obviously don't have Kleinfeld levels of stock, are they just ordering the most popular things? Is there a system for borrowing samples among shops so that brides have more choices? Or do brides just have to go to more shops if they don't find something they like at the first one? Do they just show brides catalogues for the designers they have accounts with so they can order it and hope it's good?
On the designer end, how many samples is a designer likely to produce of a given dress? Are they making money on selling the samples to bridal shops or are they taking a loss and hoping they get enough orders to make up for it? I know the samples eventually get sold, but how long will a designer typically keep a design in production before the sample is considered too out-of-date and sold off? Or does something else prompt the sample to be sold off?
Also, my impression is that the dresses ordered are made to order, hence the long wait times. If a bride wanted it, would someone like Pnina Tornai's team be able to make her something from their line of five years ago or ten or do they only make current year stuff? I assume there's a certain amount of possibility that particular laces or whatever would go out of stock, but a lot of bridal fabrics don't change much over time.
I don't know what else I might want to know, but if you know it, I'm probably interested.
This is purely a question of idle curiosity, I'm not planning to get into the business, so no information is particularly out of bounds. If there's an article out there explaining how it all works, I'm happy to have a link. There are just things I wonder about as I watch Say Yes to the Dress clips or walk by the bridal shop that's between my house and my bus stop.
A lot of bridal dresses are obviously *very* expensive to produce, yet a store like Kleinfeld's has an absolute zillion of them. Do they pay wholesale prices up front for the samples? Or accept them on loan from the designer and return them later? I know they don't carry every dress in every size (that's what the giant clips are for) but do they carry multiple size of samples? Can they decide what sizes they want their samples in?
What about smaller bridal shops like the tiny one near my house? They obviously don't have Kleinfeld levels of stock, are they just ordering the most popular things? Is there a system for borrowing samples among shops so that brides have more choices? Or do brides just have to go to more shops if they don't find something they like at the first one? Do they just show brides catalogues for the designers they have accounts with so they can order it and hope it's good?
On the designer end, how many samples is a designer likely to produce of a given dress? Are they making money on selling the samples to bridal shops or are they taking a loss and hoping they get enough orders to make up for it? I know the samples eventually get sold, but how long will a designer typically keep a design in production before the sample is considered too out-of-date and sold off? Or does something else prompt the sample to be sold off?
Also, my impression is that the dresses ordered are made to order, hence the long wait times. If a bride wanted it, would someone like Pnina Tornai's team be able to make her something from their line of five years ago or ten or do they only make current year stuff? I assume there's a certain amount of possibility that particular laces or whatever would go out of stock, but a lot of bridal fabrics don't change much over time.
I don't know what else I might want to know, but if you know it, I'm probably interested.
I’ve only ever been on the consumer side, but it’s worth ci side ring that a fair amount of places make you pay to try on dresses ($25-100) to hold the appointment and then if you purchase from them that amount is usually applied to the cost.
Usually designers only make dresses out of current or very recent collections
You often research which dresses you like and which designers make them before booking at a place, as they won’t carry those you’re interested in.
It’s a very different shopping experience than most. You may try on as few as 2 dresses, in an hour long appointment maybe up to 7? But overall I’d say trying on under 20 is “normal” (I could be wrong on that, but it’s also a popular question on Say Yes to the Dress, so you’ll see a range of responses as well as the assistants’ reactions to the response
posted by raccoon409 at 1:39 PM on May 23
Usually designers only make dresses out of current or very recent collections
You often research which dresses you like and which designers make them before booking at a place, as they won’t carry those you’re interested in.
It’s a very different shopping experience than most. You may try on as few as 2 dresses, in an hour long appointment maybe up to 7? But overall I’d say trying on under 20 is “normal” (I could be wrong on that, but it’s also a popular question on Say Yes to the Dress, so you’ll see a range of responses as well as the assistants’ reactions to the response
posted by raccoon409 at 1:39 PM on May 23
On the sizes, many stores carry only one sample size for each dress. Some will carry two or three sample sizes for each dress. Some people's dress trying on experience in some stores is holding the several-sizes-too-small dress on its hanger up to themselves in front of a mirror and trying to guess whether it will look good on them.
I went to an independent bridal place where (generally alternative) custom gowns are made in the attached workshop. They had about 20-30 sample dresses on racks to try on in a variety of sizes and styles so that you could get a sense of what you wanted for your own dress. The expectation was that essentially you would customise (extensively if you wanted) one of the maybe half-dozen base models, and the owner would create an annotated sketch of your customisations, take your measurements and the workshop would make the dress. 5 years ago when I got married, the dresses cost £1500-£3000. Famous London bridal designers (Phillipa Lepley, Suzanne Neville, etc) appear to use the same business model at approx 3 or more times the price point.
posted by plonkee at 3:27 PM on May 23 [1 favorite]
I went to an independent bridal place where (generally alternative) custom gowns are made in the attached workshop. They had about 20-30 sample dresses on racks to try on in a variety of sizes and styles so that you could get a sense of what you wanted for your own dress. The expectation was that essentially you would customise (extensively if you wanted) one of the maybe half-dozen base models, and the owner would create an annotated sketch of your customisations, take your measurements and the workshop would make the dress. 5 years ago when I got married, the dresses cost £1500-£3000. Famous London bridal designers (Phillipa Lepley, Suzanne Neville, etc) appear to use the same business model at approx 3 or more times the price point.
posted by plonkee at 3:27 PM on May 23 [1 favorite]
I worked part time at a bridal shop many years ago, it was an interesting experience and I learned a lot. This was before the bridezilla era, in a small city with only one other bridal shop locally. No appointments. I never asked how we got the samples, they just showed up along with the invoices. We only had one sample per style, mostly in the size 8 or 10 and a few samples in 6 and some in 12 and 14. Too big, we pinched the back together, too small we didn’t zip it and just held it together. Generally we’d pull 5 or 6 gowns. Any more than that, they’d all run together. And inevitably the bride would choose the first or second gown she tried on because that was the one all the rest were compared against. Sometimes a bride come in with a page from a bridal magazine and if it was a maker that we dealt with, yes we would order it. A few times girls would bring in their mother’s or grandmother’s gown and asked if it could be altered. It was a treat to see heavy silk satin.
They were made to order so we’d take measurements and consult the maker’s sizing chart to determine what size to order. The thing to remember were that the gowns were tightly fitted with no give, only a tiny bit of ease. Many a “size 8” bride was upset to learn we were ordering a “size 10” because that’s what their waist dictated and the seamstress would have to alter the bust. Sometimes we could have them try on a different size gown from the same company to double check. There were some older style samples that could be bought off the rack if you didn’t want to wait two months and this is when they were still sewn in NYC. Wow, it’s China now? In Thailand, wedding gowns are two separate pieces: the bodice and the skirt. I always thought that made more sense, like bathing suit separates, easier to get the correct size.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:04 PM on May 23 [2 favorites]
They were made to order so we’d take measurements and consult the maker’s sizing chart to determine what size to order. The thing to remember were that the gowns were tightly fitted with no give, only a tiny bit of ease. Many a “size 8” bride was upset to learn we were ordering a “size 10” because that’s what their waist dictated and the seamstress would have to alter the bust. Sometimes we could have them try on a different size gown from the same company to double check. There were some older style samples that could be bought off the rack if you didn’t want to wait two months and this is when they were still sewn in NYC. Wow, it’s China now? In Thailand, wedding gowns are two separate pieces: the bodice and the skirt. I always thought that made more sense, like bathing suit separates, easier to get the correct size.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:04 PM on May 23 [2 favorites]
(What an absolutely fascinating question!)
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:35 AM on May 24
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:35 AM on May 24
Ok, so I fell down a wee rabbit hole on this, and am utterly unsurprised that the first many pages of search results are not particularly helpful, from puff pieces written by wedding-industry entrepreneurs owners on Forbes to Market Trend Reports that one can purchase from businesses with names like researchandmarkets.com to an NYT Style piece about high-end small dress retailers trying to survive the pandemic. This probably reflects the fact that this IS an industry, like soft drinks or loan products, and so I bet somewhere there is better info. Some promising things I found:
The Library of Congress has a Wedding Industry Research page! I bet you could email this exact Ask to an LOC librarian and get some interesting info. I did take a look at the linked reports from The Knot, which is its own behemoth content-generator and re-packager of mass-market wedding goods and services services, and they seem to be more about trends and overall costs, pulled from surveys of the site’s users - not much about the business of wedding-dress making.
From 2022, an NPR piece about the Ukrainian wedding-dress industry
From 2023, another NYT piece about the dwindling labor supply of sewing talent for wedding-dress alterations
Older - a 2011 Marketplace segment on why wedding dresses are so expensive (a much better question for further research than my searches for “wedding dress economics” and “wedding dress industry”. ^_^), a 2014 Washington Post article on H&M making a $99 wedding dress.
Would love to hear if you find interesting facts that are easily shared!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 12:09 PM on May 24
The Library of Congress has a Wedding Industry Research page! I bet you could email this exact Ask to an LOC librarian and get some interesting info. I did take a look at the linked reports from The Knot, which is its own behemoth content-generator and re-packager of mass-market wedding goods and services services, and they seem to be more about trends and overall costs, pulled from surveys of the site’s users - not much about the business of wedding-dress making.
From 2022, an NPR piece about the Ukrainian wedding-dress industry
From 2023, another NYT piece about the dwindling labor supply of sewing talent for wedding-dress alterations
Older - a 2011 Marketplace segment on why wedding dresses are so expensive (a much better question for further research than my searches for “wedding dress economics” and “wedding dress industry”. ^_^), a 2014 Washington Post article on H&M making a $99 wedding dress.
Would love to hear if you find interesting facts that are easily shared!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 12:09 PM on May 24
Response by poster: The most interesting thing I've found has been this older Reddit AMA that talks about things like markups and how the internet is pushing local bridal shops out of business. Most the Reddit AMAs are mostly questions from brides about picking dresses but this one gets into the business a bit more.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:59 PM on May 24 [1 favorite]
posted by jacquilynne at 12:59 PM on May 24 [1 favorite]
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2023 GlobalTimes.cn
“China is a leading supplier of wedding gowns. As much as 80% of the world’s western-style gowns are produced there, according to the American Bridal and Prom Industry Association. ”
CNN 2020
posted by Ideefixe at 12:04 PM on May 23