Interview by Nell Whittaker
Portrait courtesy of WED Studio

NW  How did WED Studio, your bridalwear company, begin?

AT  About eight years ago, I got engaged and started looking for a dress, but nothing matched my personality in the way that I wanted it to. So I approached Evan with the idea that we could make a dress, just as a fun personal project. We went to the pub and started talking about it, and about what was missing in the industry. Then we thought, why don’t we do something here?

EP  It’s changed so much now, but back then, it felt insane how huge the wedding industry was, while the majority of the people we knew wouldn’t buy this stuff. 

NW What is it that characterised the industry that meant you couldn’t connect to it at that point?

AT  It was either traditional or all “contemporary”, which Vera Wang was leading, and perhaps there was room for something more challenging in a different sense. 

EP  The process of buying a wedding dress felt very old-fashioned. But it’s funny – six years down the line, we understand far better the necessity of every single one of those processes. The question instead becomes, how do you create a dress which is both modern and approachable? One part of the bridal experience that we try to avoid is the hard sell from a salesperson. It’s us, the designers, who are fitting people in the dresses. We wanted to change the culture of bridalwear. At the time, every model looked the same and the industry was so homogenised, but not everyone who gets married is tall, skinny, white, blonde and straight. It’s not just the dresses – it’s opening up the industry to a different kind of consumer. A bride, perhaps, who never really thought about their wedding, or never really thought they would get married. 

NW  The wedding dress designer is often delivering more of a service than a product – the whole process of the showroom with the champagne, the mum and the friends. You’re selling someone the experience of being a bride as much as you’re selling them a dress. 

EP  Yes. The job is almost like hospitality, as you’re hosting people, but we do it differently from how you will typically be hosted in a bridal store.

AT  We have our moodboards and all other random stuff out. It’s a proper working space.

NW What have you learned about how people relate to the whole idea of the wedding dress? 

AT When we were working in ready-to-wear, we had never had such a deep connection to the customer. We were a bit naive about that, but now we have learned that it’s a very personal thing. We had to learn how emotional this dress is. 

EP  I think this is partly to do with the fact that no one we knew thought that much about weddings! It’s not until you start meeting loads of brides that you realise how much anxiety there is around that choice.

AT  It’s probably one of the most expensive items of clothing the person will ever buy. 

EP  We’re there to guide them while they learn about what they want. Many people have a preconceived idea of what they think will look good, because of things they’ve worn in the past, but a dress can look so varied on different people. Then, there’s the added question of how it looks in the venue, and what the partner is wearing. In the beginning, we thought that the people who came to us wouldn’t care about that stuff, but everyone cares about feeling good and looking good on the day.

NW  What unifies your different designs – what’s your language? 

EP  Our handwriting is our hand draping. That’s probably the most important period of our creative process, because we’re always trying to find a volume in a way that hasn’t been done before. Our signature look is the tie drape that we’ve been doing since the first collection, which has had many iterations over the years. The aesthetics across bridal can be very samey, but you want someone to look at the dress and know it’s a WED dress. We think about draping not only from an aesthetic perspective but from a technical one, too: our dresses are so light, because we manage to create volume without the weight. Some people think you can only get scale by shoving ten underskirts under there. 

AT  For our very first collection, everything was made in white and in black, because we toed the line between ready-to-wear and bridal. At the time, it felt provocative. It was very Saint Martins and dramatic.

EP  One side of the showroom was all white, and one side of the showroom was all black. Conceptual!

AT  But it didn’t make sense for where the market actually was. 

EP  The reason that we held on to the ready-to-wear for so long was because of the stigma attached to bridalwear fashion, which has now changed. Bridal designers are suddenly not uncool anymore. 

AT  We fought against that a lot. Lots of people even told us to change the name – like, don’t mention the bridal thing.

NW  What’s the uniquely fun or joyful part about what you do now?

AT  In ready-to-wear, the financial models are very strict. If a dress needs to be sold for under £1,000, you’re limited in what you can do. You produce a design, then you’re forced to start stripping back all the things that you love about this dress. You’re left with one tiny little detail from the original design.

EP  It’s so dispiriting. The last season that we did ready-to-wear, the stores were trying to push the prices down, but then the sales went down. People really want the quality and detailing. That was when we realised that we can’t make the complex garments that people want for the price point of ready-to-wear. Then, there are a lot of things that make our day-to-day so joyful. It’s so varied and creative. You want to make a healthy number of dresses, but you don’t need to sell 10,000 of them. The complexity and the exclusivity gives us a chance to experiment, by using nicer fabrics, and giving the factory more time. Each dress gets attention for nine months. It’s a much nicer way to work, and to interact with all the clients face-to-face.  .