Bride Wars and Tennis Scores

0:03Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's fashion and beauty memo Line Sheet. And today with me on the show is designer Danielle Frankel to discuss the business of bridal.

0:21Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. Line She is scoopy, analytical, and above all, fun. Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more. If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount.

0:57Just go to puck.news slash fashionpeople to join Puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you had a great week. I got back from my vacation on Tuesday and it ended up being a fairly busy week for news. As I'm sure you can tell, we do not cover every little thing that happens in the fashion and beauty industries. We're very selective. And sometimes on a slow news week, there just isn't much. But interestingly, things are picking up. Travis Kelsey not only announced an engagement, which whatever, I don't really care. I don't want to talk about it any more than we already have, but I'm sure we will.

1:38Anyway. He also announced a collaboration with American Eagle, which I thought was interesting. More on that online sheet in the Wednesday issue. Plus the Venice Film Festival started. I'll have some pics of Best Dress next week. And then we're going to have a very special guest on next Monday or next Tuesday, September 8th to sort of talk about Venice and many other things in that world. And what else is going on? Oh, oh, gap earnings happened and the U.S. Open is happening. On that front, there was obviously a lot of chatter about Yelena Ostapenko's words to Taylor Townsend post match. So much drama.

2:32People are rude. I mean, I'm also a sore loser. Don't participate. If you can't handle it, you can't be classy. Don't participate. Anyway, of course, there was also the news of Carlos Alcaraz's buzz cut, but about the clothes. Okay. People were complaining that you can't buy our queen Coco Goff's New Balance kit. New Balance, you need to get on that. And they were also speculating as to why Jack Draper forced himself to compete, even though he was supposed to take eight weeks off before he did anything. He was injured. He was supposed to take eight weeks off. The US Open started in seven. He was too early.

3:11He wasn't ready. Some were saying he may have rushed things because he just signed this big new deal with Yuri, which I think is pretty huge, given what we know about Kirstie Godso's deal. and he wanted to debut the new kit. But honestly, I don't know. Biori signed him for a long time. They signed him because he's a good-looking guy, not because he's, like, the best player in the world. I don't know what his actual ranking is. I think it's five or something. But anyway, I don't think that's why. I think he was just excited to play, and unfortunately, he is no longer in it. Is he a great player?

3:47I don't know. I don't really watch tennis. I do. I am interested. I did play tennis in high school, but not I'm not following it super closely right now, more than ever, because I like to be in the culture, but not not as closely as you probably also from the sidelines, a very avid reader of line sheet and an occasional fashion people guest who would like to remain anonymous in this case said my girl, Maya joint is flying under the radar, but has the strongest look. So Maya is this Australian wonder kind. She's sponsored by Red Bull and she wears this brand called Elite 11, which has a lot of tennis players.

4:31So interesting. So it's like Red Bull by Elite 11. Good for Elite 11. Interesting approach. There was also a lot of like high fashion. Venus Williams wore custom URL. I loved her custom Kate look Navy. Uh, and then Jessica Pagula and a bunch of other people wore Y three by Adidas. Anyway, send me your best, your, or your favorite looks, and maybe I'll include some, a little item in line sheet at the end of the open in other news on Thursday, I dug into this lawsuit. Natalie mass and a filed against her former boyfriend, Eric Torstensen in a California court. Natalie founded Netta Porter and Eric founded Frame Denim were sort of the king and queen, or you should really say queen and king of a certain group of fashion people.

5:26Everyone who works in fashion, who is anyone knows them and is connected to them somehow because Eric was a creative director at an advertising agency that he had founded. So he worked with a lot of different brands. Natalie obviously touched every brand as the, the person running net a porter and a port a whatever. Um, and their life and work were one in the same. And the suit sort of outlines that I explore the business implications of that suit in which mass and a accused Torsten sin of fraud, deceit, and many other things. as of my recording, he has not, Eric has not published a statement or anything.

6:06Maybe by the time you're listening to this, they will have published a statement. You could read the suit online if you want. But, um, I think the hope on all sides is that they take this private and settle out of court. So best of luck to everyone involved. And I, I hope you read my piece. Um, finally one note on this conversation with Danielle, she followed up with me afterwards. She's very studious. And she just wanted to say that she had wished she had talked more about the showroom in New York and the gorgeous new store on Melrose in Los Angeles. And I think she has a good point. I haven't been to the showroom in New York, but I've been to the store in Los Angeles.

6:46And there just really aren't, if anyone has ever gotten married, that many experiences like that in bridal. It's really like if you were going to a fancy fashion boutique and you're on the BIC tour. floor. That's the experience for every single person that goes into Danielle's floor. And it is, you know, very one-to-one experience. So she's very proud of that and just wanted to emphasize it. If you are a bride and you would like an appointment, Danielle, I mean, you can just email the website. Don't email me, but whatever. I would suggest it. I had a great one-to-one experience. My dress was custom many, many years ago, and I thought it was a fun way to approach it.

7:33So let's get going and hear what she has to say about the business of bridal and how she is changing it. Danielle Frankel-Hirsch, welcome to Fashion People. Thanks for having me, Lauren. What'd you have for breakfast this morning? I know everybody says that they know this is coming. But mine is probably a first for you. I actually made myself some poached eggs on toast, but with a side of an IV drip because I woke up not feeling 100 % and I had a big day ahead of me. So I called someone and within an hour at 9am, they were at my house. And so that was my my breakfast moment. That is a real fashion people breakfast.

8:25If I ever heard one, that's awesome. I love it so much. Yeah. I won't ask you the details of the drip. How are you feeling? I'm actually feeling much better. Yeah. Thank you. I'm, you know, a little cold, but I'm okay. It's summer cold season. My kid woke up this morning and was like, I'm sick. I can't go to school for the first time ever because his little friend was sick yesterday. And I was like, we took his temperature. He's like, I was like, what, what doesn't feel good? Oh, my head, my stomach. I think he just wants to watch television or something. That's exactly it out. Yeah. And what I, what we said was if you stay home, you have to stay in bed and read books.

9:07And he was like, okay, let's walk to school. So we exactly that he's really excited to go. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're feeling better. Do you work from home a lot or do you go into an office? I go into an office almost every day unless I'm traveling or I mean, there are times where I'll stay home if I need, you know, quiet and just need to focus. But that's because when I'm at the studio, I'm really in every department and kind of like, you know, going from place to place within the studio, whether it's the atelier or the sales team. And so if I really just need to sit, then sometimes I'll work from home.

9:46Yeah. Where's your studio? What neighborhood? It's in the Garment District, the heart of the Garment District. It's really in the middle of everything, which I'm very proud of because I know right now that part of the business is really struggling. And we have 11 factories. And so we are surrounded by the factories and our production team is going from place to place. And we have just found it's the easiest location to operate out of. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Especially because your brand is about 10 years old, right? We are eight years old, actually. Eight years. Okay. So even younger, to start to choose that area eight years ago, it was already, that was an unconventional choice in some ways.

10:39That's really interesting. Do you produce everything in the U.S. or do you do some abroad? I would say 90 % is in the United States and then we have about 10 % that's produced in Italy and a little bit in India. But I would say the bulk of it is really in the U.S., in New York specifically. So 11 factories. Yeah. Are they specialists? And you have an atelier in your studio, obviously, but what kinds of factories are there? We have an atelier. So I can explain a little bit about how they all work in tandem with one another. The atelier produces our original samples and what we call our size six duplicates.

11:24So if we're producing our first sample in a size two, the second sample is made in standard production size six or eight, depending on the style. And then we grade from there. And And then each factory specializes in something else, but, you know, there's a little bit of crossover. So, for example, one factory is amazing with draping and they'll actually put the garments on the dress form, which is really important for a lot of our construction. And then some factories, they specialize in tailoring and more, I want to say like a cut and sew. They know how to do just, I would say more specialty tailoring type of things that a draping factory wouldn't necessarily be as skilled in.

12:11and are any so your brand is a bridal brand and we're going to get into the business of bridal are any of the factories like bridal specialists or does that not really exist especially for the kind of work you do not necessarily no actually i would say that they're definitely evening wear focused uh these are factories that understand how to construct a bustier or a crinoline which is really really important and those are also really time consuming things so it's sitting at a sewing machine for quite some time and handling those fabrics in a certain way also our fabrics are ivory so it has to be a factory that is pristine i think that sometimes you walk into a factory and it can be a little bit chaotic and unorganized and i think what we are really looking for in our factories when we're sourcing them is can they take on an ivory product and keep it really beautiful and the quality of the fabric remains the same and our quality control process is really very they go through a lot of steps before a garment actually walks out the door so from getting it to the fabrics to the factory and then back to our studio we want that process to be pretty clean we're going a little bit backwards or or inside out but you said ivory is do you have like a very particular color of your fabric is that you we actually we have a danielle frankel ivory that is specific for our business i would call it more if you're thinking of a color in your head it's closest to pearl in that it has like a real warmth to it but it still reads as a light ivory uh but we actually have probably 20 shades of ivory within all of the fabrics that we're using and we dye each one of them to a certain standard of ivory.

14:05And I actually like to mix ivories because sometimes people think that like, you know, you have to have one specific shade and it will be throughout the whole garment, but I don't have that belief. I think that you need several different shades of ivory within the same garment and, but, you know, done in a very specific way so that you have different layers and opacities and things that are kind of working together to create a cohesive gown that looks very expensive and well-produced versus like a flat piece of, you know, one shade. Do you ever make a white dress? Not really. Not unless we're using cotton poplin, which we have used a little bit in the past, but no, not really.

14:54Yeah. Okay. One final question on this, and then we're going to rewind to figure out how you got to 20 Shades of Ivory. Do you use that factory in style? Does that factory still exist? Oh my gosh. I don't know if they still exist. Yes, of course I know them. I don't think that we are in style, but I definitely am aware of the factory. I did a story with them probably 10 years ago. And I feel like it may have closed. They did a lot with Marc Jacobs and Theory when Andrew Rosen was still there. But they were really awesome. And it was when you mentioned Pristine, it was a very clean factory. Yeah.

15:33And it makes a huge difference. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting as a journalist, like I've been in many and sometimes people don't clean up, but usually you can really tell when people clean up because a journalist is coming through with them, I could tell that it was just the standard. And it is an interest. It's a really good point when you're dealing with light fabric in particular. Yeah. You need it to not be a mess. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So let's start. Let's kind of rewind to how you, how you got into being an expert on, on 20 different shades of ivory and creating your own proprietary shade.

16:14So you are by definition, a bridal designer, but how did, how did you choose bridal? Because a lot of the stuff we were, we've already spoken about feels if the language is, is connected to ready to wear as well, more than I would say most, most bridal brands, but how did you, how did you get your start and how did you end up launching your own business eight years ago. Yeah. So I worked for Vera Wang and I had an incredible experience there. And I really learned from her and her business what a wedding gown was and how to produce it beautifully, where to, you know, source fabrics, things like that.

16:55And I think through that experience, I also realized that I had a particular aesthetic. I was within the age group of women getting married and I would go to the stores, talk to the sales team and really try to understand what was doing well for us. And this wasn't necessarily part of my job, but I just really enjoyed that, like really being on the sales floor and on the design team. But I was really a designer and I actually was a drapist more than anything. So I would take fabric, put it on the form, manipulate it and really see what it could do. And I think that if you talk to people who knew me back when I was a younger designer and everything, they would say that I was very particular, but also that was really my craft was draping.

17:49And as I evolved as a designer and left the business and everything, I realized that wedding gowns are truly special in that it's probably the largest retail purchase somebody's going to make. You have the beauty of the client being somebody who wants to go through an experience that she might not be able to find. So I really found that there was a lot of opportunity in the experiential side of things. And although when I launched, it was just, you know, a little tiny studio within a factory in Midtown, which is where this all began, I really saw that there was two parts of the business that I could kind of like wrap my head around starting.

18:38One was the craftsmanship and design side of things. And the other was this one-on-one experience that I could have with clients and grow that experiential part. And through thinking about those as two separate things, being a part of one company, I thought it was a really unique way to start a bridal business.

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19:31How would a normal bridal business operate? Like all the bridal businesses that show it at bridal. Do you show it bridal fashion week? We do and we don't. It depends on the year. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, we typically do though. And I think the cadence of our collections is really dependent on what's going on in our business at that time. what custom brides we have going on uh and because we're in a growth phase which i'm so excited about it's we're always thinking ahead so if next year it doesn't really make sense for us to show on the bridal calendar we won't but if it does we will this year we are and uh we also have what we call like quiet collections gowns that we produce we don't really market and they kind of just live on their own.

20:21So brides discover the gowns when they come into our studio. That's another collection that we have that people don't really necessarily know about because we don't shoot them editorially or anything. So maybe what we can do is break down for me in the simplest terms, how like a traditional bridal company would operate and then break down for me, how you will operate and, and what you have seen come out of making those changes to tweaking the model? That's a great way of doing this, I think. Okay, so a traditional bridal designer will make a collection and then that collection will go on to trunk shows.

21:03It'll travel the United States and onward. Brides will try on the original samples and then they'll purchase a sample and it will get to them maybe a year later. And it depends on what they're trying on, what collection it's from. Sometimes it can be six months later if it was an older season. But generally, if it's a new collection gown, it won't arrive for quite some time. And, you know, it's cut one. So that's, I would say, what a traditional bridal designer will do. The way that we operate is we try to throw all of the bridal rules out the window. and actually when we hire people I really try to tell them that I want you to think of like how we can perfect this and not listen to any of the rules of how things are made how they're marketed anything like that because we are young and it really gives us our the ability to change the cadence of things and how they're produced and all of that so when we produce a collection you can purchase our gowns almost right away and and that's partially because we are mainly a direct to consumer business and we can ship our gowns from our los angeles store to our new york studio and whatnot but also we don't make the bride wait in that you know if it's a new collection of course she'll get it nine months later but we don't make her wait to try it on and that is the big difference for us.

22:34We want her to see a new collection and we want her to shop that collection. We don't want that collection to sort of sit and then a year later be something that it takes off at that point. We want our new collections to be what the brides are going to currently purchase. Got it. And would you say that generally the length of time between someone buying a dress and their wedding has shortened in the time you've been a designer? Yeah. And I think we've spoken about this before, but what we've taken is this idea that people are shopping in a shorter amount of time. But also, I think that the trend cycle is moving super quickly.

23:21And, you know, we obviously want to be ahead of that and we want to be almost trendless, which is really hard, right? Because you want to make something beautiful. I believe that it shouldn't be too of the moment. And I want to think of this as the modern classic and not something that is a fleeting trend by any means. So it's taking certain things like the customer and how she's shopping and thinking about how can I keep up with her? So we have decided to cut our garments in in you know bulk production which is atypical for bridal uh which means that we'll go to our factory and we'll cut 50 to 70 of these gowns which makes it sound like okay not so special but on the flip side of it 40 of our business is customizations so a bride can come in and and that also differentiates us from other bridal designers is that i think we are more open to customizations and purely custom than, you know, you have to purchase this gown and it is what it is.

24:29And the client walks away with just her purchase that's sort of, you know, the gown as designed. We really want to work with our clients to make them feel special and to make them feel like they have a one of one garment, but in a way that's easier for us to produce and having an atelier helps. It's interesting because that sort of halfway production is actually very similar to like how Zara works, where they cut stuff and they do a lot of what they call it greige. And then they cut a lot and then they can turn something around in two weeks that is like very of the moment by just like tweaking it a little bit and dying it a certain way and adding a certain flourish or what have you.

25:21And so it's interesting that you're at the other end of this very meticulous process, but you're taking the lessons, the smart things from that and applying it to something which is modernizing your business. Yeah, I think what I look at is I see companies or even just ideas of the way that businesses operate. And I say, how do I apply that to what we're doing now? Because we have to keep up with our client. And I think a lot of people who are in my position maybe say like, well, this is the only way I can do it. And I don't have that mindset at all. josh and i want josh is my husband our ceo and we want to keep up with the movement you know it's it's very it's constantly changing and i think that the way that you succeed is you have to be obsessed with how your customer is shopping and there's a very traditional way in which a bride shops.

26:27And we realized that maybe we have to change that. And maybe this woman is open to the change. And I think that that's why we've been able to succeed in the way that we have is because we're looking at it from a customer service perspective, in that you don't want to turn away a client who has a wedding in three months. I mean, that would be silly in a way you want to service her and at the same time you want to work with somebody who wants to have a custom gown and do that in a you know four month period as well so we've really pushed our team to create methods and organize ourselves in a way that we can make that stuff happen and and it's really miraculous in a way but I think that partially like the reason why we're able to do this is because our team is so strong and they know how to execute really beautifully and that is a lot of this as well, is having the right resources and the right team and the right hires.

27:28Well, that was going to be my next question. What is your approach to hiring? Because covering the American fashion industry, I hear a lot about, obviously, Carolina Herrera and Oscar have an atelier and Calvin Klein has one. There are certain brands that still have them, But everything we hear, the fact that you were working with 11 factories in the garment district is amazing to me because I didn't even know there were still 11 factories. But how do you approach hiring and also do you feel like a lot of it is the sort of training and method that they get once? Do you have a lot of success with people who start early with you and work their way up?

28:15Or I think it's a little bit of both. We've had people who have started as interns and have risen their way up. We have also hired people from other companies, our competitors, for example, and they have taught us things that other people are doing really well and brought them in. But I think our main approach to hiring is really choosing people that understand what we're doing and would be very proud to be part of this journey that we're going on. Because we need creative people who not only understand the business of bridal and the way the garments should look, but also the speed at which it's happening.

28:57I think that the first thing that I generally ask somebody when I'm interviewing them is, what do you think of the brand? Because sometimes people will answer something like, oh, I think it's like if you're, you know, a cool, and I'm saying this in quotes, bride, and you choose Danielle Frankel. Like, that's really of the moment. And then I know that that person isn't necessarily the right fit, because I don't see it that way. I see this as a heritage brand in the making, meaning we're not there yet, but we will be. And I want to think of our daughters and granddaughters and how they are going to think of wedding gowns when they eventually shop for them and how our brand relates to that in the future.

29:42So it's taking culture, but at like the right moment, right? So who's getting married that's in the world right now, that would be really important to dress and who cares about that person? And then aside from that, on the flip side, the real weddings we have that are photographed and then shown, whether it's on Instagram or just social media in general, how does that influence our brides as well? And really educating those women as to what a bride could look like today, but also thinking about it ahead of time. So the hires we make, they have to really sit with that. And they're going to be the ones that are influencing, whether it's from our sales team and really working with the brides or on our production team and thinking about that as well.

30:37It's interesting to me because there is something very much, you are very much of the fashion world, but also have not rejected the bridal world. So you show at Bridal Fashion Week sometimes, but you also did the CFDA Fashion Fund. And I got married, oh my God, a long time ago, 14 years ago. And my struggle when, and at the time there was like, I think that Urban Outfitters had just launched Beholden, which was like their bridal, David's Bridal competitor. And then at the higher end, Net-A-Porter had like long band dresses and they had a little bridal boutique, but there just wasn't a lot. And I actually had, I don't know if you've ever run into this woman, Andra Gabriel.

31:25She was a lingerie designer in the eighties. If you read American Psycho, she's like when he lists out the, what people are wearing, she's listed many times. I love that. She was a Vogue. She was when Vogue editors were wearing like slip dresses, they were her slips. And so she does a lot of custom. And I had this Airdom dress that I really loved that she sort of did. And it was inspired by. But it was really hard for me to find something then. And I feel like it's still a challenge for especially as the like what a wedding is has changed. A lot more people, I think, now get married at the city hall.