Once the honeymoon is well and truly over, the question of what to do with your wedding dress is increasingly preoccupying brides. After all, as concerns around sustainability become more commonplace, wearing an often eye-wateringly expensive gown for one day only seems wasteful in more ways than one.
Given that it’s the color white that traditionally screams bridal, one option is dyeing your wedding dress—a route taken by beauty marketing executive Tori Smith, who tied the knot in August 2024. “After my wedding, I saw a bride that had [dyed her dress]—and I just thought that I’d love to do that as well,” she tells Vogue. The bride in question? Gemma Sort Chilvers, whose baby-pink gown went viral after being featured by this very magazine last year.
Happily, The Own Studio—the London label behind both brides’ wedding dresses—happened to reach out to Smith to ask her if she would be interested in road-testing its new dyeing service, which is launching this month in partnership with Glasgow-based natural dyer Cavan Jayne. “That idea of re-wearability was one of the reasons we founded our label; it’s something we are incredibly passionate about,” co-founders Jess Kaye and Rosie Williams explain. “For us, the next natural step was to create an incredible in-house service that could actually make this happen for our customers, and manage everything from the dyeing to the alterations.”
After agreeing to try out the service, named Own Again, Smith was sent digital color swatches to choose from, before receiving physical samples made of the same material as her dress, allowing her to “really visualize how it would look on the fabric.” The fact that The Own Studio predominantly uses natural materials to create its wedding dresses makes the process easier. “I have a lot of experience re-dyeing garments of all types and found the style and fabrics of Own designs are very sympathetic to taking the dye well,” Jayne explains.
In the end, Smith opted for a deep-pink shade that perfectly complemented her strapless silk-mikado gown (style 053), which she’d chosen for its contemporary feel. “I definitely wanted to keep the dress; it really did feel like a shame and a waste not to be able to re-wear it,” she explains, noting that she had the dress hemmed to make it more wearable. “I just loved the idea of giving it a second-life; [it being] something that I can keep in my wardrobe and wear again and again.”
Indeed, the newly pink gown has already had its first outing, with Smith wearing it at a friend’s London nuptials just the other week—although no one noticed at first that it was her bridal gown. “Only one person asked me if it was the same brand as my wedding dress; they didn’t realize it was my [actual] wedding dress,” she says. “When I told them, they were a bit shocked that I’d dyed it, but they all thought it was great.”
Kaye and Williams hope that Smith will be the first of many The Own Studio brides to give their wedding dresses a new lease of life via their in-house service. “Your wedding gown is an incredibly special piece, and often a big investment,” the pair conclude. “It deserves to be loved and re-worn for years to come.”
The Own Studio’s Own Again service launches this month, with prices starting from £900 ($1,200).