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We may be speaking in a rooftop suite in The Standard hotel in London, with racks of wedding dresses ready for the 2026 season, but this year, the city’s leading bridal designer Kate Halfpenny is looking back on 20 years in the business. Since starting as a weekend side hustle in 2005, Halfpenny London — known for designing bridal separates so brides can build their look — has become a staple for soon-to-be-weds in London and beyond, from Vogue editors to actors.
Like many bridal designers, Halfpenny — who studied womenswear design at Central Saint Martins, and previously worked full-time as a celebrity stylist for the likes of Emilia Fox and Kate Moss — saw post-Covid upswing, as more people than ever invest in not just their big day, but the many events that surround it. Now, Halfpenny London is a scaling business, split across wholesale, made-to-order and bespoke wedding looks. Bespoke commissions start at £25,000 and the atelier takes on no more than a dozen a year.
At The Standard, we’re a stone’s throw from the brand’s London flagship on Bloomsbury’s Woburn Walk, which opened in 2013 and is fully booked for the next two months.
Of course, it hasn’t been plain sailing. In the UK alone, the wedding industry lost over €5 billion during the pandemic, according to research from financial company Hellosafe. Halfpenny turnover fell 31 per cent during that time, while remaining profitable. But this led to a “bumper” year in 2022 when weddings returned, with sales up 53 per cent. Since, sales have continued to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9 per cent, according to the brand, as brides increasingly seek more modular bridal looks, and as the brand attracts more VIP brides from broadcaster Elizabeth Day to creator and nutritionist Emily English (@EmTheNutritionist). Today, Halfpenny has 30 stockists, representing 30 per cent of the business, alongside its website and store.
Off the back of steady growth, Halfpenny London is focusing on retail expansion, with growing business in the US (tariffs notwithstanding), Japan and the UAE. But as the business expands, Halfpenny is determined to maintain her ‘Made in the UK’ business, which poses challenges. As she straddles the past and the future, the designer sat down with Vogue Business to chart her path.
Vogue: You’re celebrating 20 years of Halfpenny, but let’s take it back to the beginning. How did you start out?
This interview is a full-circle moment, in a way. In 2005, I was styling Emilia Fox, and she was getting married to fellow actor Jared Harris. I ended up making two of her three dresses and I bumped into her aunt, Fiona Golfar, who used to work at Vogue, and she said, ‘Have you ever been to Vogue House? Come jump in the cab with me. I’ll take you for a look around.’ They were doing a feature on bridal and they asked me to make a veil for writer Charlotte Sinclair, and they wrote about it. And that was kind of the start of the brand. Emilia was just like, ‘You have got a website, right?’ And we built one. It was pre-social media, so the brand grew almost completely word of mouth.
Vogue: At which point did you say, ‘OK, I’m going to pack in the styling and focus on my business’?
My front room would become a bridal studio on a weekend, and my husband James would be trapped upstairs. He couldn’t get down because there’d be brides changing! Eventually, he said, ‘You can clearly see the demand. You’re working all weekend and you’ve got back-to-back appointments.’ So in 2013, I found a shop on Camden Council’s website. I was still styling, and so we opened the shop, which is still our flagship today on Woburn Walk. I was thinking back then, I only need to sell one dress a month to make this shop work, little did I know how much running a shop actually costs. I was so naive, I didn’t think about little things like needing a phone line or a burglar alarm, and most importantly someone to staff the store while I was still styling.
Vogue: And did you sell more than one dress?
We did. It literally blew up. Then in 2014 we got approached by loads of stores to say, ‘Can we wholesale you?’ And I was like, OK sure. Wholesale wasn’t even on my radar before. Our first partner was The White Closet in Manchester, which is still one of our best stockists today.
Vogue: The bridal market has grown tremendously. What’s led to Halfpenny’s success? Why have you maintained such strong appeal even with rising competition?
I changed the bridal landscape, for sure, when I launched the brand in 2005 with bridal separates. I didn’t understand why it wasn’t just a thing, why couldn’t a wedding look be a top and a skirt? For me, it was about creating your own bridal identity through the tools that I give you. But that was very new, and lots of people weren’t ready for it. Even today, some of our stockists need educating around the separates. The success of the brand was in this product innovation.
Vogue: I know Halfpenny is completely made in London. How did you transition from bespoke to more mass production while staying true to this ethos?
At first, we still made all our dresses in-house. Then, we found a small factory in London, and now we have four factories that we work with, all inside the M25 motorway, so we’ve kept it all British-made. It’s super important to me. The challenge is scaling and keeping the integrity and the craft of the brand. It is hard here. It’s expensive to make in London, let alone anywhere in the UK. It’s also finding artisans in the UK. Our head seamstress is Ukrainian. She’s phenomenal. I’d love to take the youth of today to show them what an absolute skill it is, and to celebrate that. I don’t think we celebrate enough heritage and nurture the skills we have here.
Vogue: Is the ‘Made in London’ identity of the brand compelling for your clients or wholesale partners? Does that make it worth it?
I think it’s me that cares the most. With brides sometimes, we lose them to another brand that is produced somewhere else and is less expensive, there is the price resistance there. But our brides come to us and they are prepared to spend more. And with our pieces being separates, we encourage them to rewear elements of it to get the most out of it. One of our brides might wear the corset of her dress with an amazing pair of trousers and the beautiful split skirt with a sweater. That’s how I encourage you to get the most out of your pieces.
Vogue: More brides are buying outfits for events beyond the big day. Have you adapted in any way to kind of serve maybe those other bridal moments in the journey, or is the business still very focused on the main dress?
It’s changed a lot. [In response to this trend] we’re actually launching a mini dress edit on Net-a-Porter next month. We have always kind of made our dresses so you can peel layers off, and you can go down to a slinky dress for the evening. The collection is diverse in the fact that you have those interchangeable moments and can take things off or put them on, or like a beautiful beaded jacket over your slinky dress. I have dreams of even launching a swimwear collection or collaboration, as bridal swimwear has become popular now for destination weddings.
Vogue: Are there other shifts that you’re seeing in the bridal market around what brides are looking for?
Veils are back! I think there was a long period where people didn’t want veils, but Covid was the line in the sand. Post-Covid, people really went bananas elevating their looks, pushing the boundaries with jewels and veils and all of the bells and whistles, because it was something they’d not been able to do. We’ve even created new kinds of veils, which are attached to sheer sleeves, for brides wanting to try something new. Right now, there’s a huge shift towards really simple, clean fabrics with more of a textured veil, or some kind of accessories that sort of elevate the dress. Lace is coming back, too.
Vogue: If I’m choosing a dress to wear, I’m thinking about the silhouette based on how I feel about certain parts of my body. Is that a big factor for brides?
We really celebrate women’s bodies and all their nuances. And the collection is super diverse in sizes as well as style. So in our flagship boutique, we have sizes 8 to 24. I couldn’t walk into a shop and try a dress on and order it if it was a size UK 10. We’re not all cut from the same cloth. Another thing that I always say is our bodies are not a piece of fruit. I hate when people are advised, ‘You’re a pear shape, you should wear this.’ No, you should wear something that really makes you feel the very best version of yourself. Don’t describe yourself as a piece of fruit.
Vogue: Looking ahead, when it comes to wholesale, where do you see growth potential?
We’ve seen a lot of growth in America, and so much more opportunity there. I do dream of opening a store in the States on the East or West coast. Japan is also a really great market for us, but it’s a totally different model. They rent the dresses there. So they buy deep into it, because they buy lots of different sizes and styles, because there’s a limit to how many times they’ll rent them out. We modify the dresses because of the ceremony around the Japanese wedding and the bowing and things, so they can’t be too low at the back and they have to be a certain height at the front. The UAE has picked up traction because we’ve done this very sophisticated coat dress called Sophie.
Vogue: As you mentioned, you’re seeing strong growth in the US. Are you concerned about the tariffs that may be placed on the UK? What will you do if they’re confirmed?
We have partnered with an excellent international trade consultant who will help us navigate tariff implications on both our supply chain and sales exports. For now, we are committed to our wholesale objectives in the US and will continue to support our long-standing and new partners there. Whatever the impact of the tariffs, we’ll approach wholesale with a long-term view in the same way we have approached business in the past two decades.
Vogue: You mentioned that innovation is key. But how else will you set yourself apart in the increasingly saturated bridal market looking ahead?
We have never stopped innovating. Even our campaigns weren’t classic brides with a bouquet just wandering through a kind of church. We try to show diversity, we show creativity. We just make it more fashion, really. I didn’t really follow the bridal trends. I never really fitted into the bridal arena. And I suppose now, there’s so many more brands like me that are more maverick. But that was the foundation of my collection from the start. We’ll continue doing that.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
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