In the depths of the chat communities of various cult-favorite Substacks like Laura Reilly’s Magasin, brides-to-be pop up every now and then like moles in an arcade game. They’re almost always searching for their “something old.” On Reddit (danger: rabbit holes ahead), you’ll find what only be described as hordes of brides searching for the perfect vintage dress, while on #BrideTok, women offer tips and tricks for sourcing the perfect white dress in the comments. Google search trends show that queries for “vintage wedding dress” have skyrocketed in 2025. The space, to put it quite simply, is hot.
“The rise in vintage bridal, like all things in bridal fashion, mirrors the trend cycles in regular fashion, but a few months behind,” says Los Angeles-based bridal stylist Hope LaVine. As celebrities increasingly parade down red carpets in archival looks, women have started to walk down the aisle in similarly museum-worthy looks. Places like Happy Isles, Cha Cha Linda, Transplant Vintage, Tab Vintage, and Gossamer have been staples among fashion-forward bridal shoppers for the better half of the last decade, but in the past few years, a crop of social media based sellers with small but loyal followings have started to pop up. Sellers like Sara Nicole Vintage, Studio Dorothy, Sophie’s Vintage Bridal, and Raffe Vintage are appearing increasingly in Reddit threads, influencers’ videos, and even editorial bridal features.
Drawn by the allure of free marketing and big bridal budgets, these women have built devout followings via Instagram stories and word of mouth. LaVine recently collaborated on a bridal edit with the iconic Tab Vintage, and most of the pieces they posted were gone within seconds of being uploaded, according to the stylist. Nikki Reynen, the owner and curator of Raffe Vintage, has shifted a growing share of her energy toward sourcing bridal looks since discovering how high the demand is. She was selling exclusively over Instagram DM—pieces were selling anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes after posting—until a few months ago, when she created a tiered membership approach to meet rising appetite. Raffe Runway, which runs at $31 per month, gives members access to new inventory an hour before it is available to the general public. Raffe Front Row, which costs users $99 per month, also gives members early access to listings, along with direct access to Reynen for sourcing requests. She has nearly 150 paying members already—75% of whom are brides.
Vintage has undergone a major rebrand. As an epidemic of sameness haunts social media feeds worldwide, fashion-minded shoppers have turned to resale sites like The RealReal and Poshmark for looks that help them stand out in a crowd. Social media has also created a need and desire for individuality that is only exacerbated at weddings. “Exclusivity is the number one luxury,” says Lizzie Wheeler, founder of vintage bridal atelier Studio Dorothy. "And as style becomes more and more referential, people start to think, ‘Why wouldn’t I want the original version? If New Dior is looking at 1994 Dior, why wouldn t I want 1994 Dior?"
Wheeler, a long-time informal sourcer of vintage for family, friends, and followers of her if-you-know-you-know Instagram account @shit.u.should.buy, launched Studio Dorothy after years of fielding bridal requests on social media and in real life. In the 11 months since starting, she has more than recouped her corporate salary—something she never thought she’d be able to accomplish. She attributes this success to the anti- bride aesthetic that has come to dominate the industry. “Everyone wants to look cool and fashion-y and a little bit different,” Wheeler shares.
On their wedding day or wedding weekends, women want to look and feel like themselves, only elevated. “I hate the whole idea of people asking, ‘What does the bride want?” explains author and internet creator Eli Rallo. “I don t want to be a bride, I want to be a human being.” Shopping for vintage looks with Sophie’s Vintage Bridal and Sara Nicole Vintage was a grounding experience for Rallo. “When I work with these women whose passion is vintage garments, they feel so much more centered on the garments and the history and the culture and the fashion of it all, and less so focused on like the wedding of it all,” she observes.
This flexibility to be creative and experimental, while still adhering to a sense of personal style, was especially attractive to Patty Diez, an associate director at Eater, who quickly realized that anything traditionally bridal “wouldn’t match the vibe, setting, time, or place” of her daytime, “nearest and dearest” New York City wedding ceremony in September. She weighed the custom or contemporary route, but ultimately decided on vintage from Studio Dorothy because she wanted a dress that felt distinctly hers. “I felt completely validated when, at City Hall on the day I got married, there was a bride wearing the Magda Butrym dress I’d briefly considered buying,” confesses Diez.
Lizzie Noonan, founder of marketing consultancy North Moore, wore all vintage and secondhand looks to her October wedding on the Balearic island of Menorca. She wears a lot of vintage in her day-to-day life, and wanted her wedding weekend to reflect that. “I really wanted to wear something that felt timeless, and I thought one of the ways to ensure that happened was to find something that had already stood the test of time,” Noonan states. With Wheeler’s help, she landed on a one-of-one design from the now-defunct label Steven Birnbaum, which she wore to her rehearsal dinner. Her ceremony dress was from LoveXLove, a Tampere, Finland-based bridal boutique that Noonan anoints as the “Finnish version of Happy Isles,” and her welcome party dress was sourced on The RealReal. “Lizzie [Wheeler] was like a therapist-slash-stylist-slash-vintage dealer,” Noonan says. “And I loved that aspect of the experience. It was so fun to play dress up.”
If a strong, well-defined vision is what unites the shoppers who flock to small, online resellers, then fun and hyper-personalization are what define women’s experiences with them. Many of the women I spoke with emphasized that, even through online interactions, they felt like they were working with a personal shopper. Sophie Madorsky founded Sophie’s Vintage Bridal to give clients the intimate experience she had while shopping vintage for her own wedding dress. “I really like to get to know my clients on a more personal level,” she says. “I want people to feel more connected to the dress than they would be connected to a pair of jeans.” The sellers I spoke with emphasized that vintage pieces have a story and a soul that resonate with shoppers in a way contemporary wear does not. “[My appointment with Studio Dorothy] was the only appointment where I left dreaming about multiple dresses,” gushes Diez. “She was also incredibly responsive; anytime I emailed or messaged her, she got back to me right away. Her customer care is genuinely unmatched.”
Charlotte Bickley, digital creator and editor at large at Daily Front Row, had a very specific vision for her Monaco wedding, partially inspired by Chanel’s Formula 1-influenced cruise show in 2023. “The actual collection was a little too loud for me,” Bickley recalls, so she turned to Sara Nicole Vintage, who she has worked with before, to execute her dream. She ended up with a mismatched set of vintage Chanel pieces that serendipitously looked perfect together—and perhaps even more serendipitously, fit like a glove. Bickley bought both items over Instagram, sight unseen.
Selling rare pieces as independent sellers means taking on the sourcing risk themselves, so many smaller vintage studios do not accept returns. With archival pieces fetching thousands—and sometimes even tens of thousands—of dollars, this can make shopping for a wedding dress on Instagram risky business. “You have to trust the vintage seller you’re working with,” says Kennedy Bingham, the bridal stylist behind Gown Eyed Girl. This trust extends to the condition, authenticity, and perhaps most crucially, the sizing of an item.
As Eva Maria Lopez of Cha Cha Linda told Vogue earlier this year, “The thrill of finding a ‘one-of-a-kind’ piece comes at a ‘one of a size’ reality.” This reality can be stressful for shoppers. “I do know many brides who have purchased five or more vintage dresses because they are fearful that someone else might buy it, or it’s going to sell out,” LaVine notes. The stylist does not recommend that approach, as it can quickly become overwhelming and expensive. “I would say you kind of have to let the piece come to you,” she continues. This sort of patience and reliance on kismet is not for every bride, but it is incredibly satisfying when the right piece ends up in the right hands, according to Mark. “Sometimes that happens over a DM,” she says, “even a bride saying, like, I just got out of a meeting, I wouldn t have even been able to check. My phone five minutes ago, and then you posted this, and I saw it, and it s my dream dress.”
The women I spoke with all believe that the vintage bridal trend is here to stay. And with so much choice, brides are no longer confined to traditional boutiques or standard silhouettes. That means more sellers entering the space, giving access to brides with different budgets, body types, and wedding traditions. From studios offering $90 slip dresses for the morning of the wedding to archival sellers offering 1990s Dior, anybody can find their dream vintage dress in the depths of Reddit or the corners of Instagram. “Brides genuinely cannot get enough of it,” says LaVine.