Mirroring circular fashion trend, brides say ‘yes’ to thifted dresses
Last fall, Emmali Osterhoudt was at a Goodwill store in Birmingham, Alabama, when she stumbled upon a Galia Lahav wedding gown. Although she was not yet engaged, Osterhoudt, 21, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to purchase the find: The gown was priced at $25.
Her thrifting success went viral on TikTok, and brides chimed in with stories of how they thrifted their own wedding looks. Now set to wed Nicolas Gould, 23, who proposed in December, Osterhoudt, a nursing student, plans to wear the gown and thrift decor for her wedding.
Osterhoudt’s shopping decisions reflect the growing movement toward circular fashion, the idea of recycling and reusing clothes. Thrifting is on track to become a $700 billion market by 2030, making it 23% of the fashion industry, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a British nonprofit that promotes a circular economy.
At Awoke Vintage in New York’s Brooklyn, “we noticed an uptick about five years ago of people coming in and asking for wedding dresses, especially in the spring and summer,” said Rachel Despeaux, an owner of the store known for its denim that also stocks white and ivory dresses and suits.
“People are more interested in having their big day be defined by wearing vintage.”
While white can be a tricky color for vintage
— it yellows over time — Despeaux explained that the growing consumer interest in circular fashion has led her wholesalers, who specialize in vintage and thrift products sourced globally, to curate
wedding collections for clients like her.
Katherine Geisel, 32, of Brooklyn transitioned to a mostly vintage and secondhand wardrobe a few years ago, citing a pileup of fast fashion in her closet. “I hardly ever reached for pieces for more than one season,” she said.
Geisel, a creative producer at the skin care company La Mer, says she regularly has “about 50 tabs open on my favorite vintage stores.” She started sourcing pieces for her Sept. 23, 2023, wedding even before her engagement to Andrew Geisel, 31, a founder of the cafe group Citizens. She found items including a cream dress from the 1930s at Desert Vintage in Manhattan for her welcome party, and a sterling silver French comb from the late 1800s, purchased on 1stDibs, to wear for her ceremony.
She bought a sequined gown with polka dots from Etéreo Vintage for dancing.
Prices can certainly be cheaper at thrift and
vintage shops: Wedding dresses retail for $65 to $185 at Awoke Vintage, for instance, versus the average of $2,000 for new ones.
But brides like Geisel said the motivation was more about the hunt for an unique piece than about costs. She spent $4,000 on all her secondhand pieces.
These outfits may have yet another life after the wedding. While most bridal gowns end up preserved in a box in storage, many thrifters view their wedding attire as a continuous piece in their closet.
Francesca Wallace,
29, the digital director of Vogue Australia, wore a secondhand Prada mini dress for her wedding reception in November 2022. “I felt wholly myself wearing the dress, and I loved that it wasn’t something anyone had ever seen before,” Wallace said of the secondhand Prada dress, for which she paid $460. “Since, I’ve worn it to cocktail events, and you’d never know it once doubled as a wedding dress!”