DTC wedding dress company Anomalie wants to be the Stitch Fix of bridal - Glossy

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• DTC wedding dress company Anomalie wants to be the Stitch Fix of bridal - Glossy
• Vera Wang Surprises Military Brides With Their Dream Dresses on TODAY - NBC Connecticut
• Dresses on Rent: Why buy, when you can rent? - Economic Times
• What Happens When a Weddings Influencer Gets Divorced? - The New York Times
• Chrissy Teigen buys her red carpet gowns, re-sells them for charity - Page Six

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Clothes for your BAE

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Let AI help you get dressed

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What the statistics say

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From sarees to chic gowns, they have it all

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Why should girls have all the fun?

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Longing to wear a bridal lehenga created by Sabyasachi Mukherjee but can't afford the price tag? Want to carry a bling clutch bag to the weekend kitty party, but are hesitant about buying it and cluttering up your closet? Expensive clothes and accessories are no longer fantasies beyond the reach of the millennials as more and more players are setting up shop in the online clothes and accessories rental space. Business is brisk. Growing at a CAGR of 10.6% year-on-year, the Indian fashion rental market is touching Rs 12,000 crore, as per analyst estimates, with new companies such as Stage 3, Liberent and Rent A Closet helping it to expand. (Text: ET Bureau) (Pics: DateTheRamp/Facebook; RentTheBae/Facebook)

The recent news of Rent It Bae acquiring peer fashion rental services startup Flyrobe is a proof that fashion rentals are doing very well. AARK World Pvt Ltd., which owns and operates Rent It Bae plans to consolidate operations, ramp up its omnichannel footprint and tap the overseas market. The brand will operate under the brand Flyrobe. The startup had been funded by Sequoia Capital, Chiratae Ventures and Tokyo-based STRIVE, having received $10 million in two rounds. Last year, Flyrobe raised Rs 26 crore from existing shareholders at Rs 150 crore valuation after early-stage funding from Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Sandeep Tandon, Kunal Shah, Zishaan Hayath, Rohit Bansal, Kunal Bahl and Abhishek Jain in individual capacity. Rent it Bae offers western party wear, vacation wear, accessories, jewellery and sunglasses, apart from designer wear and occasion wear for women. (Text: ET Bureau) (Pics: RentItBae/Facebook)

Flyrobe hopes to cash in on the AI-enabled fashion rental store technology and virtual trial room launched this year by Rent It Bae and plans to integrate the virtual trial experience in all brand stores and Flyrobe's apps by the next quarter under the brand Tryrobe. Flyrobe claims that it has facilitated the largest marketplace for customer-to-customer renting (inventory curated from individual closets) with more than 1,800 curators onboard. The company has five physical brand stores and plans to launch 10 franchise stores in the next 12 months. (Text: ET Bureau) (Pics: Flyrobe/Facebook)

It is estimated to reach $1,856 million by 2023, registering a compound annual growth rate of 10.6% from 2017 to 2023, said the Online Clothing Rental Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017-2023. Principal at Sequoia Capital Abheek Anand says, "Apparel rental is picking up steam across the world. There is a great opportunity to build a meaningful company out of India. Users not only get access to aspirational fashion products for special occasions, but can also get one-time-wear clothes on a convenient pay-per-use basis. Flyrobe is capturing the latent demand for a service like this and Sequoia India is excited to partner with them." Delhi-based Stage3, which gives women and men access to hundreds of custom-fit designer outfits and accessories, was founded in 2016 with a small round of seed funding. But it is now close to raising funds. (Text: ET Bureau) (Pic: DateTheRamp/Instagram)

As the sharing economy grows, the social stigma of renting clothing seems to be diminishing. Take the example of DateTheRamp another fashion rental startup, their website claims "We stock only authentic designer occasion-wear for women."We need to invest in creating and scaling the market, educating consumers and changing mindsets," says Chinmoy Panda, co-founder of the company. The company focuses on women's occasion wear and jewellery in Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. PromElle, a peer-to-peer clothing app, was the brainchild of two Indian-American teenagers, Nishka Ayyar & Riya Gupta. The classmates at Harker School in San Jose were looking for a solution to buying expensive prom dresses. They wanted to recover some of the costs by renting these dresses out. The app was launched early in 2017, with $50,000 raised from friends and family. Many of classmates of Ayyar and Gupta were early adopters and tried the test versions of the app and provided feedback. The duo was influenced in a big way by the entrepreneurial energy in Silicon Valley. (Text: ET Bureau) (Pic: DateTheRamp/Facebook)

Some startups including Wrapd, The Stylease and Rent It Bae are renting out sherwanis, jackets, even ties and bows for men. The Stylease offers high-end designer wear for men and women. Like other startups The Stylease too has stylist to help you choose the fabric and custom fit it too. Another essential eitem for women is carrying a clutch or purse for special evenings. If you want to show-ff that sleek clutch at your friend's wedding but don't want to spend a bomb then check out Ziniosa. You can choose from their collection of over bags from international brands like Michael Kors, Coach, Ted Baker, DKNY and more. Each bag can be rented for three days to a month. Like any online purchase this too is delivered at your doorstep and picked up. (Text: ET Online) (Pic: The Stylease/Facebook)

DTC wedding dress company Anomalie wants to be the Stitch Fix of bridal - Glossy Posted: 09 Dec 2019 09:06 PM PST The wedding dress shopping experience is broken. That realization is what motivated Leslie Voorhees Means to launch direct-to-consumer wedding dress company Anomalie. On Tuesday, the company is launching a new dress design tool for brides to make wedding dress shopping simpler, and achievable online. As mass companies like David's Bridal (which once claimed to outfit one out of every three American brides and now makes up 25% of the gown market) are slowly trying to adapt to a modern bride's needs, more digitally native bridal gown companies are flooding the market. In 2017, the U.S. wedding dress industry reached $2.86 billion in sales, and it's projected to be worth $3.23 billion by 2021, according to Statista. Floravere opened in 2016 (and opened its first retail space this summer), while Azazie has been around since 2014. "Boutiques just can't carry the inventory that we are able to provide in this digital experience. We have customization technology to provide [dresses] for any design, shape, size and budget. This is not the typical digital experience, especially for a typical DTC company. We are not a Shopify website," said Voorhess Means. In the last three years Anomalie has raised $18.1 million in funding from Lerer Hippeau, Maveron and Goodwater Capital. It used a portion of that to invest in the new DressBuilder tool. Brides take an online quiz and within minutes of finishing, they're sent a personalized, illustrated sketch of their dress. The company's technology is able to pull together pre-sketched elements of the final dresses and fit them together into a final picture within minutes. From there, the bride works with a stylist via phone at Anomalie to make any tweaks or alternations to that dress. Or she can go back to the drawing board and design a new dress. Final products cost, on average, between $1,000 and $2,000, not including costs for any alterations the bride needs to make. Since the company makes made-to-measure dresses, the idea is that there will be little to no alternations after the bride initially provides her measurements. But in the event they are needed, the company provides customers with a list of local trusted tailors. This new dress-building tool is part of the DTC company's play to position itself as a Stitch Fix of bridal gowns, by building out data-powered tech capabilities as the foundation of the company, said Voorhees Means. Since launching, Voorhees Means has been slowly building a strong team of data scientists and technology experts, including former Sephora vp of digital innovation Marcy Zelmar as chief experience officer. In the last year, Anomalie has hired from Stitch Fix, NatureBox and Uber. Anomalie has spent over 30,000 hours over the last three years building the DressBuilder tool by adding in 8,000-plus "building blocks" of a bridal gowns to a database, according to Voorhees Means. That includes various necklines, bodice shapes, skirt silhouettes, fabrics, lace details, sleeve lengths and strap widths. With the data points from a quiz, a  customer will be served up one of the 4 billion potential dress combinations available through Anomalie's database. The quiz includes questions about one's wedding destination, personal style and dress style preferences. Anomalie doesn't have storefronts and handles all communication with customers via email or over the phone. Voorhees Means said the company has no plans to move into physical retail, even though the bridal dress shopping experience is one that many brides choose to do in person. "There are consumers out there looking for really convenient experiences. Today, [shopping for a gown] can be flipping through a digital catalog on an iPad with a girlfriend while sitting on your couch," said Darin Archer, chief strategy officer at Elastic Path. Voorhees Means said the company has largely been a place where brides go after hitting up four or five bridal stores and coming up short based on their budget, size or choice style. The company offers dresses for brides sizes 00 to 30-plus, Voorhees Means said. Dresses are made to measure, and the company doesn't carry any inventory. The design process typically takes about one month to allow for any changes the bride wants to make, or if the customer wants to receive fabric samples or lace swatches ahead of placing the order. That's followed by an additional four-plus months to create the dress and ship it to the customer.

Vera Wang Surprises Military Brides With Their Dream Dresses on TODAY - NBC Connecticut Posted: 20 Nov 2019 12:00 AM PST What a beautiful surprise! Iconic bridal designer Vera Wang honored a group of military brides by designing custom, couture wedding gowns for their special day — and some of the brides-to-be just revealed their dresses live on TODAY before getting a surprise from the online wedding planning and registering company Zola. NBCUniversal is an investor in Zola. There wasn't a dry eye in the room as the brides revealed their stunning wedding gowns to their family members. (Their fiancés, meanwhile, promised to steer clear of television and social media so they wouldn't see the dresses!) One bride, Shakia, whose fiancé, Jared, just returned from his Army deployment, brought her sister and maid-of-honor to tears when she walked out in her strapless dress. Another couple, Christy and Ashley, both stepped out in beautiful, custom-designed wedding looks. Ashley, who is on active duty in the Air Force, sported a sleek, white pantsuit, while her bride-to-be rocked a gorgeous, ruffled gown. The final bride, Annie, has been planning her wedding over a 14-hour time difference with her fiancé, Michael, who is currently deployed in South Korea. She looked beautiful in a sleek, figure-hugging gown with a long veil. Wang, who worked with the brides in honor of Military Family Appreciation Month, said that while she has designed countless bridal gowns over the years, working on these dresses was one of the most "rewarding experiences" of her life. "You can't help but see the sacrifice these people make every day of their lives, and their families," she said. "And for me to be able to give back in some small way is just a privilege." And there was yet another surprise in store for the brides. Zola, an online wedding planning and registry company, is providing each couple with $1,000 toward their dream registry. Congratulations to these stunning brides-to-be! This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

Dresses on Rent: Why buy, when you can rent? - Economic Times Posted: 02 Dec 2019 10:16 PM PST Updated: 03 Dec 2019, 11:46 AM IST 1/6 Why buy, when you can rent?

What Happens When a Weddings Influencer Gets Divorced? - The New York Times Posted: 10 Dec 2019 02:00 AM PST A woman who bought her wedding dress at Stone Fox Bride was probably going to wear a flower crown along with it. She most likely idolized the Olsen twins and had an active Instagram presence. Her wedding was not going to be religious, but it was going to be spiritual, and her vows might even include curse words. She was going to buck tradition, and she was going to do it in a sunset-pink robe dress with silk chiffon bell sleeves that cost $6,800. "Cool wedding culture — I'm proud to say, I think I was the pioneer of that space," said Molly Rosen Guy, the writer and designer who founded Stone Fox Bride in 2012. The high-priced bohemian wedding brand was born out of Ms. Guy's frustration when she planned her own wedding and didn't see retailers and media brands that reflected her vision for her special day. "I couldn't find anything that looked or felt like how I looked or how I felt," Ms. Guy said. "I felt like I was entering this radical union with this really radical person, and I wanted to celebrate it and explore it. But all I could find was like, articles on bouffants and Bergdorf Goodman, where my sister got her wedding dress." Once she got into the business, Ms. Guy started posting "cool wedding" content on Pinterest and Instagram, which were beginning to take off. Sharing photos of her clients, herself, her family and glamorous weddings past, she amassed over 100,000 followers on Instagram. She also started a website and an email newsletter, landed a book deal, and became the executive weddings editor at Domino magazine. From the outside, it all looked picture perfect. But like so many online personas, Ms. Guy's masked the more complicated aspects of her personal life. In 2017, she separated from her husband, but she did not tell her followers or clients for fear of losing authority as an expert on weddings and all things happily ever after. "I did start to feel like, I have to be the perfectly imperfect bohemian mom, because that was the brand," she said. "You know, because I was selling $10,000 dresses or $5,000 dresses." Even as her own marriage was falling apart, Ms. Guy continued to post about flower crowns and heirloom emeralds. That is, until last year, when she came clean to her followers and renamed her brand. What happens to a weddings influencer when the honeymoon is over? Building a Brand "First of all, the plan was never to be the public face of weddings," Ms. Guy said. "The plan was just to be a writer. To be the next Great American Novelist. I'm just kidding." Sort of kidding. From the time she was young, Ms. Guy was obsessed with writers, celebrities and writers who became celebrities. She grew up in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, with a father who worked in real estate and a mother who was a poet. She attended college at Brown, and spent a summer in Los Angeles trying to become an actress and a model, and going to clubs with Leonardo DiCaprio. ("It was the summer before 'Romeo and Juliet' came out," she said. "It was right after 'Gilbert Grape.'") When Hollywood didn't pan out, she graduated and moved to New York to pursue a career in fashion media, landing writing jobs at Nylon and the now-shuttered teen bible YM. The early 2000s were a fun time to be doing this kind of thing. At Nylon, "I was like, drowning in makeup and cigarettes and booze and cool people," Ms. Guy said. In 2005, she took a break from the work force to get an M.F.A. in creative writing. She ended up selling a novel to Grove Atlantic, but "it sort of turned into a disaster," she said. She returned the advance and the book was never published. Then the recession hit, and Ms. Guy found herself boxed out of media, working instead as a copywriter for a large beauty conglomerate. After her wedding in 2011, she landed on the idea for Stone Fox Bride. Ms. Guy secured $250,000 in investment from her brother-in-law, Peter Shapiro, the owner of Brooklyn Bowl. She rented a retail and studio space on Orchard Street and started cold-calling designers to make samples for the store. Many of them, including Ohne Titel and Ryan Roche, said yes. When she introduced her own collection in 2013, her friends Pamela Love, a jewelry designer, and Jemima Kirke, an actress, modeled the dresses for the photographer Cass Bird. One of the photos, featuring Ms. Kirke and Ms. Love kissing, made headlines. "That's when we started to blow up," said Ms. Guy. Later, Ms. Kirke's "Girls" co-star Allison Williams wore a Stone Fox Bride dress for her character's wedding on the show. More celebrity clients followed. When Ms. Guy started selling vintage pieces in her studio, the Olsen twins came through. At the same time, she was baiting her followers on Instagram with content. Her most popular feature was #stonefoxrings, a hashtag she created to share her clients' proposal stories (and, of course, pictures of their gems). "I was always fascinated by the engagement ring," Ms. Guy said. "Like when I would be at YM, I knew we were all making like $24,000, and suddenly my cubicle mate would come in with a $35,000 engagement ring and start planning like an outrageous wedding. And all I could think about was like, who paid for that? Where does it come from? What is going on? Like, who are you? It was all of the sudden like everyone pretended that she just became a different person." And so Instagram became her journalistic outlet. It also became a place where Ms. Guy would share photos of her daughters and her husband. "In hindsight, I wouldn't have done any of that," she said. "Blood and Diamonds" By 2016, her marriage was coming to an end, and selling wedding dresses, in person and online, stopped being so fun. Ms. Guy closed her studio "the day Trump got elected," she said, and started selling her inventory out of her Williamsburg apartment, while her estranged husband lived in an Airstream around the corner. "I was doing some wedding-dress fittings at my apartment with some very high-profile clients, and I would, like, pray to the Gods that they wouldn't see him as they were walking in," she said. "I didn't want anyone to know that we were split." "There was a lot of mental and emotional gymnastics that I was doing to sort of keep the brand afloat," she added. At the end of 2017, Ms. Guy published her first book: a wedding planning guide "for the wild at heart." She was advised, she said, to keep her separation and eventual divorce a secret until the book was released. But shortly after, her father died, and she decided she did not want to keep up the "patina that I had things under control." On Mother's Day in 2018, she announced her divorce to her followers on Instagram. To her surprise, they were supportive. In fact, the post got more "likes" than any wedding photos she'd shared before. As has become the case with many influencers who built their brands with aspirational images, Ms. Guy began posting more "real" images and captions about her messy personal life and her anxieties. She changed her Instagram handle to @stonefoxride, dropping the "B," and started another account, @mollyrosenguy, where she wrote letters to her late father. On @stonefoxride, she stopped sharing the #stonefoxrings stories. Instead, she recently offered her followers a very different engagement ring story, involving an art deco diamond and a trip to the E.R. Now, Ms. Guy said she is working on a memoir, tentatively titled — what else? — "Blood and Diamonds." Her brand, she said, has evolved to represent "women in transition." As it turns out, she is not the only woman who had a perfectly-imperfect, bohemian wedding in the 2010s that ended in divorce. In the brand's heyday, Ms. Guy featured wedding photos from many of her clients on Stone Fox Bride's website. A few years later, she started to get calls from brides who wanted to get the photos taken down. "People started to say, 'I'm going through a divorce,' or 'my husband died,' or 'I'm going through a family drama and my name is in the press, I don't want to be on your website,'" she said. "A lot of my brides started to enter these messy transitional middle places, which I could really identify with." With her wedding-dress business all but shuttered, Ms. Guy wondered how she might connect with these clients again. She still had her Instagram following, which included a new set of women drawn to her long, confessional captions about life after death and divorce. And so last year, she asked them if they would be interested in taking a writing class about "love and loss" in Williamsburg. Twenty-seven of her followers signed up for her first class. Now, teaching writing is Ms. Guy's main profession; she calls her new business the Brooklyn Writers Collective. Some of her former bridal clients are her students. (A six-week course costs $1,500 — much less than a custom gown.) In a syllabus from this past summer, she described the course as a "crash course writing workshop" for "foxes in flux." She shares some of her students' best work on, yes, Instagram. Ms. Guy said she created the class as a way for women to tell the kind of stories that are not easily represented with a diamond ring or a white dress. But she may find a way to do that in the future, too: Women have started to approach her to make rings and dresses fit for a stylish and spiritual divorce.

Chrissy Teigen buys her red carpet gowns, re-sells them for charity - Page Six Posted: 10 Dec 2019 10:11 AM PST Chrissy Teigen is getting real about the red carpet. The model, 34, recently revealed that she can no longer borrow dresses from designers to wear on red carpets since giving birth to daughter Luna, 3, and son Miles, 1. "I have worn a lot of expensive things but always have to give them back," she tweeted in response to a fan asking about how many expensive dresses she's worn. But, she added, "Since the babies, I'm not sample size anymore." She said that now, she buys almost everything she wears and then sells the clothing on The Real Real, the popular resale site for designer labels, and donates the money to charity. Some of her recently worn items that may find their way online include an orange one-shoulder dress by Solace London ($470), a Ralph and Russo jewel-encrusted silk gown ($3,963) and a feathered frock from 16Arlington ($925). The cookbook author has previously discussed her post-baby weight, saying she is happy with her "new normal" and was her thinnest while suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth to Luna. "I'll take these pounds and this feeling," she said. Share this:

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