“Ellie, this might not be possible,” I said, defeated with cheap white wine in a plastic cup in hand, overwhelmed and overstimulated at the Manhattan Vintage Show. Ellie, my first engaged friend ever, is getting married in October and is committed to having an all-vintage wedding. We were on the hunt for vintage looks for all of her wedding-related events: bridal shower, bachelorette party, reception, and after-party.
“This is the biggest fashion event of my life,” Ellie said with a look that said: you of all people are supposed to understand this. I, of course, didn’t disagree. So we kept looking. She had, after all, already found a vintage blush pink corseted Dolce & Gabbana dress from the 90s for her rehearsal dinner, so she was already part of the way there.
We ran into another soon-to-be bride there with similar ambitions and felt a sense of both solidarity and competition. Vintage shopping, to be fair, is more or less a race. And when it comes to vintage bridal shopping, the stakes of the race are high: the everlasting satisfaction or dissatisfaction with how one of the most important days of your life turns out. So we had to move quickly.
Luckily, we had found vintage bridal shower, bachelorette party, and after-party looks, and we still had a few unexplored leads. On one of the first Spring days of the year, in an idealistic brownstone in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn that we all spoke about dreaming of owning, Ellie invited her closest friends for a staged wedding photoshoot she was cast for and sold us on the idea by emphasizing that there would be complimentary food and drinks. Even her fake wedding was all-vintage or secondhand. We were all styled by Studio Dorothy, a New York-based vintage bridal-sourcing business founded by Lizzie Wheeler. In this instance, the lead found us.
Before establishing Studio Dorothy, Wheeler described herself as “an online secondhand whisperer.” With a knack for always finding the best deals, soon-to-be-brides quickly started approaching her with requests and concerns. “Brides were already coming to me feeling that they didn’t have the resources to get second-hand and vintage bridal on their own,” she said. “The existing options felt high risk and potentially low reward.” This, paired with the facts that sites like The Real Real had no defined bridal section and, at the time, vintage bridal salons were few and far between, with those that did exist offering limited sizing, high appointment fees, and luxe price points, led to Studio Dorothy’s creation.
Naturally, Wheeler’s initial clientele was largely creatives. “A few months ago, I joked that I’d never gotten a banker in my studio,” she said. “As soon as I said that, a finance girly booked in. Now I have doctors, lawyers, bankers, and brides from all around the country.” This is a testament to the growing popularity of vintage shopping in general as the years pass. As more and more celebrities wear vintage and archival pieces on red carpets, and as the climate crisis has prompted many of us to become more intentional and conscious consumers, vintage and thrift shopping has become increasingly normal. It was only a matter of time before vintage bridal was normalized, too.
We didn’t know it yet, but Ellie’s search would come to an end on a chilly April evening that didn’t feel any more special or significant than the other days we had spent searching. We didn’t have a feeling or instinct, there were no signs or indicators. We were, however, still hopeful. We had gone to Vivienne Westwood earlier that day, and Ellie could not get the idea of everyone knowing where her dress came from and how much she spent on it out of her head. And worst of all, anyone could easily replicate her look. She wanted it to be special, but not special in an expensive designer way. Special in a way that was hers and hers only and could only be replicated with intense, valiant efforts and a lot of skill.
So, on that offensively cold early spring day, we did this: we honored the fact that it was Vivienne Westwood and that it was cool to be there in a private room drinking expensive sparkling water amongst her clothes and on her birthday, nonetheless, but ultimately left empty-handed and undecided. We later ended up at Happy Isles, where Ellie had previously found that perfect pink vintage Dolce & Gabbana rehearsal dinner dress. With new pieces coming and going from the salon every day, it was worth a second trip.
Ellie beamed when she put on what was very clearly her dress. This is what I’ll say about it: it was Italian and from the '90s. The sales associates suggested that it was made custom for a bride. Now, it was about to receive a second life and story. It was also exactly what Ellie had described wanting and what she, at times, thought was only attainable by doubling her budget to buy a new dress. The race was over, and Ellie’s search ended right where her all-vintage wedding dream was born: at Happy Isles’ loft-like salon on Spring Street in Soho.
Instagram / @studiodorothy.nyc
Host, content creator, and vintage enthusiast Natalie Shine reflected on her September 2023 Montauk wedding and the role Happy Isles played in it while wholesomely making banana bread. “I was a big thrift shopper post-college,” she said. “That was my activity, especially post-COVID. If I had to entertain myself, I would just go to the bins or go to Goodwill.” Now, she pretty much exclusively wears vintage or secondhand, The RealReal, eBay, and Depop being her go-to sources. So, when she got engaged, she simply couldn’t see herself wearing a new dress. It just had to be vintage. “As I started shopping, the things I ended up being drawn to all ended up being vintage. I was like: actually, I want to make sure that I only wear vintage for my entire wedding.”
She was drawn to off-white, drop waists, and feminine touches. Rosettes, bows, and pearls were very much on her mind. She was obsessed with an aesthetic that she described as “campy classic bridal.” “I wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn on Long Island,” she said with a laugh.
Shine’s first find was for the main event: the ceremony. She had become obsessed with a 1990s Vera Wang gown with an off-the-shoulder neckline and adorned with rosettes that Happy Isles had sold at their Los Angeles location. But this is the thing about vintage shopping: you can’t always find exactly what you want exactly when you need it. Instead, her dress found her. “I believe that vintage finds you,” she said “There is a level of serendipity involved.”. What found her, thanks to Happy Isles, was a labelless 90s dress with a vertical row of pearl embellished bows down the front. For the whole day, she paired her looks with a little vintage Chanel handle bag in baby pink. “When I bought it, it was in real tough shape. It was such a good price, so I was like: I see a vision here.”
Serendipitously, she later stumbled across a '90s Vera Wang dress, similar to her initial all-vintage wedding inspiration, on The RealReal and purchased it immediately with the vision of transforming it into her after-party dress. She collaborated with “a gown surgeon”, shortened the dress, and used the extra fabric to create the rosettes from the dress she previously loved. “I really wanted the after-party dress to look kind of like my ceremony dress,” she said. “Almost like if a fairy godmother waved a wand and it transformed.”
Shine chose to have an all-vintage wedding for two major reasons. “It’s, a lot of times, considerably more cost effective, and It’s kind of this fun personal journey of treasure hunting and scouring the internet which is something I loved to do,” she said. “When you get something vintage and you start to kind of tweak and customize it, it does make you feel extra connected to the garment.”
With salons in both New York and Los Angeles, Happy Isles owner Lily Kaiser leaves no stone unturned while sourcing the best bridal pieces and fashion moments to fill the racks of both locations. “It’s really the secret sauce of the brand,” brand director Alice Dennard said. “In traditional salons, you will see racks and racks of similar style samples - everything you see at Happy Isles is hand-selected and assessed to make sure it meets the high Happy Isles standards.”
While working in a LA vintage store in 2012, Kaiser encountered customers searching for bridal on more than one occasion. “Vintage bridal back then meant endless hours online, searching and searching, only to order something and hope the style, size, and condition were accurate to what you saw online,” she said. “Not to mention, it meant you totally missed out on the bridal salon experience. Getting to see your mom and friends ‘ooo!’ and ‘ahh!’ over how gorgeous you looked.”
“It’s not always an easy task; however, vintage shopping, especially vintage bridal, is all about kismet,” she added. “The right girl, finding the right dress at the right time.”
