Getting married but lack funds to splurge on a designer gown? Maybe H&M’s new $99 wedding gown would do the trick.
The floor-length, slightly Grecian-looking white gown was debuted by H&M yesterday and it’s the retailer’s first wedding dress at an affordable H&M price point.
The dress will be sold online and in select stores starting later this month.
Clearly, H&M is doing more than marketing to budget-conscious brides and they’re essentially turning the psychology of weddings on its head.
Weddings are really crazy expensive, but that cost doesn’t necessarily come from the expense or lavishness of the materials.
In 2011, Planet Money’s Caitlin Kenney set out on a quest to find out why her wedding dress retailed for a whopping $3,500. The fabric, per a wholesaler, cost about $500. The labour accounted for an extra $700. And yet the store had marked up the price nearly 200 percent.
Kenney found that there were two main reasons why stores get away with this. Firstly, some buyers may not know anything about wedding dresses, and secondly, expensive dresses send a message, signifying the bride and groom’s social status and wealth.
“I think that on average there is a lot of status and signalling going on wedding day,” the economist Veronica Guerrieri told Planet Money, referring to the bride’s social status and her seriousness of the marriage. And it’s not just couples signalling to their guests — it’s also the wedding industry signalling to couples.
If it’s received well, this H&M dress would be very interesting as it promotes values that run opposite of absolutely everything the wedding industry is trying to achieve in our society.
The brand’s first wedding offering, a $349 collaboration with Viktor and Rolf, certainly didn’t do that well.
Would you wear this gown on your wedding day?
[Source]
