#88 Anomalie Starts A Custom Dress Revolution

Anomalie brings more transparency, customization and value to wedding dress shopping by partnering with the world's top factories and selling direct to brides. You can create your own wedding dress with a designer that walks you through the process...and you’ll be shocked by the price. Silk materials, top quality craftsmanship, a revolutionary online interface and dedicated stylists who treat each dress as if it was their own. We’re talking to Leslie Voorhees, the founder of Dress Anomalie in this episode - if you are looking for your wedding dress - stop what you are doing and LISTEN! Big Takeaways “Smarter Wedding Dresses” - Anomalie is doing things differently. Like - reallllllly differently. Disrupting the wedding dress industry is a good way to describe what Leslie Voorhees has stumbled upon and then set out to perfect, as a bride-turned-entrepreneur. The entire DRESS process is online...here’s the blurb from Anomalie’s site about how it all started: Like almost every bride, I was frustrated with the obscene markups and non-transparent processes at wedding dress boutiques. I know my way around a factory*, so I decided to investigate. I discovered firsthand that dresses boutiques sell for thousands cost mere hundreds to create. I also discovered that nearly every designer brand outsources production to third-party manufacturers. My husband and I became obsessed with how to fix the broken wedding dress industry, and personally vetted dozens of suppliers. Within several months, we formed direct relationships with the best ones and both left our jobs to launch Anomalie. The end result for our customer is that we can deliver a higher level of quality and customization for a better price than any other option in the bridal industry. We can’t wait to tell you more. Leslie Voorhees, Co-founder We love stories with this formula: problem-found, problem-solved. When Leslie was having trouble finding her own wedding dress, she dug a little deeper into the industry and ended up finding factories in China where wedding dresses are made en masse and then shipped here. Between manufacturing and overhead, the price escalates...and brides find themselves trying on and considering dresses that have been tried on dozens of times, then they order and wait for it to arrive - no refunds some of the time - then after multiple fittings, a bride walks away with her wedding gown. A gown that many other women may also be wearing. With Anomalie - a bride works with a stylist to create a custom gown, with custom fit. The process is so cool! Turns out brides don’t actually need to have the experience of trying on dresses in a shop or boutique! Listen and find out how Anomalie is replacing that experience with their online process...and saving you a lot of money by doing so. And - most importantly - you, the bride, get a dress that you designed with your ideas, for your body! It’s unique, it’s custom, and the experience is one that is embraced by all Anomalie brides. Check out their instagram page for pics of all the REAL Anomalie brides. They’re gorgeous. It’s digital...but it’s not ALL digital. There are fabric swatches sent, custom sketches are drawn and sent as a keepsake and all of the measurements are done in person by tailor partners working with Anomalie all over the US. We have learned, after years of working with brides, that the dress-buying process can be very daunting. We aren’t all models, we aren’t all sample sizes. It was absolutely refreshing to talk to Leslie about body image, confidence and the hurdles that women jump in order to feel beautiful on their wedding day. The hurdles that Leslie and her team help to overcome...for women of all sizes, shapes, styles. Links we referenced Dress Anomalie’s Website: https://dressanomalie.com Anomalie’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dressanomalie/ Anomalie's Blog is awesome! It provides wedding educational content regardless of if you use their service or not. https://dressanomalie.blog/ *Quotes * “It’s like the lost city...it’s like Atlantis for wedding dresses!” - Christy about the small town “This is an awesome new concept that you should know about. If you’re going to be wearing a wedding dress...I would definitely check out Anomalie.” - Michelle “Our process is done digitally, which is a little different. But we found that working with brides over the phone and online, we can save a lot of costs. The traditional boutiques have overhead...by centralizing with our San Francisco and our Hong Kong office, we can deliver all that value to our brides.” - Leslie, about the Anomalie process “I though, there has to be a better way to do this and I was so surprised that no one had explored an online model yet.” - Leslie on how she got the idea for Anomalie “We’ve had a lot of sweet embroidered message inside of the dresses….it really is such a personal garment. To have the ability to make something that you want instead of something that is off the rack...in the past, you would have to pay couture prices for that.” - Leslie Get In Touch EMAIL: [email protected] FACEBOOK: @TBWPpodcast INSTAGRAM: @thebigweddingplanningpodcast BE SURE TO USE THE HASHTAG: #planthatwedding TWITTER: @TBWPpodcast PHONE: (415) 723-1625 Leave us a message and you might hear your voice on the show! PATREON: www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast Special Guest: Leslie Vorhees Means. 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