According to a spokesperson from the brand, “We have been offering party dresses for quite some time and we felt that we wanted to be able to give our
customer an opportunity to look great on her wedding day by offering
this great and affordable wedding dress in our assortment.” That’s nice! But will people actually go for it? A lot of the appeal of a wedding dress is that it feeds into a bridal fantasy that you’re a special and unique princess dwelling for just a day in the hallowed kingdom of eternal love (or whatever), and Love Royalty do not typically get their garments from chain retailers.
As Hannah Marriott points out at the Guardian, while the idea of a bargain wedding dress might not turn women off, the fact that this one particular dress has “been splashed all over the Daily Mail website” might. Or the fact that it feels so impersonal — like a giant hot dog wrapped in a pretzel, it’s something pretty much anyone can buy at the mall, which dampens the spirit of specialness meant to accompany one’s big day. Wedding planner Carrie Mitchell suggests that the company “launch a collection of dresses, with a designer, rather than just one” to remedy this. (TopShop did that in 2012 with designer Richard Nicoll, and the dresses were really beautiful, albeit a bit more expensive. In addition, H&M did sell a wedding dress designed by Viktor & Rolf as part of their collaboration with the fashion house in 2006 — which resulted in literal stampedes.)
Anyway, I don’t think that fast fashion and bridal regalia are mutually exclusive — and I really love the idea of a cheap, casual wedding dress, especially if H&M actually does raise its workers’ wages like the company has said it will — but I do think that H&M’s going to have to try a little harder if they want women to seriously don something very obviously mass-produced on their wedding day. One $100 wedding dress is not enough. Let’s at least see some wedding crop tops, too.
Images via H&M and Getty.
