Like most brides, Ursula Guyer had a set budget for her 2003 destination wedding in Biscayne Bay, Florida. She wanted to spend most of it on “outrageous flowers,” she says, so when it came to the dress, she was willing to consider something secondhand.
But, after tromping in and out of musty consignment shops in Chicago, Miami and New York, she finally gave in and shelled out for an expensive new dress by Romona Keveza. “I couldn’t find what I was looking for in terms of style or experience,” she remembers. The budget was blown, but an idea was born. This month, the former advertising exec and her business partner, Stacy Szklarski (who previously worked in hospitality marketing), opened White Chicago, a new kind of consignment shop that actually makes it seem chicer to be a sensible bride. The gowns hanging in the back of this sleek, all-white “gallery for dresses” are no polyester knockoffs. They’re designer dresses with an original retail price of $2,000 or more, and they end up at White for a variety of reasons. Some are “once wed,” some are store samples and some are discontinued models or designer overcuts. No dress is more than four years old, and all are expertly drycleaned and in perfect condition. White Chicago’s inventory is still growing, but already the big names are there: Vera Wang, Monique Lhuillier, Angel Sanchez, Badgley Mischka and many others.
When brides shop at White, they’re treated with the kind of care they’d receive at any upscale bridal boutique. “We want brides—and their mothers, grandmothers, friends, even grooms—to have fun finding their dress,” says Guyer, who stocks the store’s fridge with Champagne and pumps nerve-soothing music through the state-of-the-art sound system. One of the major components of the experience is the design of the store itself, which takes visitors off the colorful art district street and deposits them into a cloud of pristine bridal white. There are contemporary white leather couches perched on a high-gloss white floor; white silk dressing room curtains embroidered
with pearls; fresh white flowers spilling out of wall-mounted vases; and a 16-foot runway where brides can watch themselves in the mirror to see how a dress moves as they walk down the aisle. In a charming finishing touch, Guyer and Szklarski both dress in headtotoe white every day.
For recent brides looking to find a new home for their gown, Guyer calculates the projected selling price using a model that takes into account things like the age of the dress, craftsmanship, condition and what you paid for it (if you still have your original receipt, all the better). The resulting number can be anywhere from 30 to 70 percent off the retail price, and when the dress sells, the proceeds are split 50/50 between White Chicago and the seller. Conceivably, if you paid $8,000 for your Vera Wang dress, you could recuperate $2,800.
If that sounds like an awfully business-like approach to take with the dress that was the stuff of your girlhood dreams, consider Guyer’s logic: “When my wedding was over,” she says, “I knew I didn’t want to keep my dress. It was a treasure to me, but we were merging two households, and there wasn’t room for it. How much good would it do me sitting under the bed?” She smiles fondly at her elegant mermaidcut dress, now hanging in the front window of her shop. “Plus, it’s so beautiful, I thought it deserved to experience another wonderful day. If it makes another bride happy, then I’m happy.”
White Chicago, 222 W. Huron St., 312.397.1571 or www.whitechicago.com.
Amalie Drury, Chicago Social, January 2006, p. 42; PDF