LoveShackFancy, a Brand for the Girls
- nora comtois
- May 31
- 7 min read
All images are courtesy of LoveShackFancy.
WHAT IS LOVESHACKFANCY?
LoveShackFancy is an up-and-coming women’s luxury brand. Currently, the brand has nearly one million followers on Instagram, and according to Business Insider, they grew in net sales about 125% from 2020 to 2021. This fall, LoveShackFancy made their New York Fashion Week debut for Spring-Summer 2023.
The brand describes itself as being “...rich in detail, flattering silhouettes, soft hues, and intricate lace, with an emphasis on whimsical hand-dyed fabrics and enchanting vintage-inspired romantic floral prints.” The brand is “...a modern iteration on vintage luxury,” says Founder and Creative Director Rebecca Hessel Cohen in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
LoveShackFancy is known for their dresses and skirts, but they sell other clothing items like swimwear and loungewear as well — some in sizes for little girls too. The brand also sells accessories like bags, hair ribbons and scrunchies, and phone cases. Additionally, they recently launched a homeware collection which has bedding, bath, and decor.
THE FOUNDING OF THE BRAND
The company was founded in Manhattan, New York in 2013 after Cohen decided to design the bridesmaid dresses for her wedding. In a Forbes interview, she says she wanted the dress to be a versatile dress that “...looked good on everyone, from the beach to the ballroom, and would be your best dancing partner.” That became the first ever LoveShackFancy item: a halter dress called “The Love Dress.”
Cohen chooses every single fabric, print, and embellishment for the collections. She says most of her inspiration comes from her travels abroad, especially from the vintage markets in Bath, Portobello, and Paris. For the image of the brand however, she says that her mother is the main muse. Her mother introduced Cohen to her love of vintage with the Victorian and Edwardian dresses, pillows, and other textiles that she kept in their house.
Additionally, it was her mother who inspired the brand’s name, LoveShackFancy. Originally, Cohen and her mother were going to start a prop-styling business for houses — houses that they would call love shacks. It wasn’t until at a photoshoot that someone commented that these love shacks were not just any love shacks, but they were “love shack fancy.”
Besides her mom, Cohen’s husband, Todd Cohen, participates in the business by managing the financial aspects and business logistics, and the couple’s two young daughters, Scarlett and Stella, accompany them to events repping the LoveShackFancy clothing.
EXPANDING THE BUSINESS
Cohen first started the business by selling dresses out of the trunk of her car at trunk shows in The Hamptons. At the time, her first collection only consisted of eight hand-dyed silk dresses. In fact, for the first two years of business, all LoveShackFancy dresses were hand-dyed in Cohen’s backyard.
As the brand’s sales began to increase, so did their retail locations. Besides their own website, they started selling online and in-store for numerous department stores like Revolve, Nordstrom, and Net-A-Porter. Now, LoveShackFancy is available to shop in their fifteen boutiques around the United States; most store locations are in New York, Florida, and California. Later this winter, they are opening a sixteenth location in London.
Each of the boutiques also curates a collection of one-of-a-kind vintage pieces repurposed by LoveShackFancy — many of the pieces are unique to the location of the store. For example, in their Nashville boutique, the store sells bespoke vintage Nashville t-shirts. Additionally, in order to promote sustainability, each boutique sells spools of extra ribbon and encourages customers to take home fabric scraps to repurpose. And to pay homage to their roots, all stores host frequent trunk shows to support other brands starting out.
PRODUCTION & WORK ENVIRONMENT
LoveShackFancy has three factories in India which utilize small-scale, handmade production methods to help reduce the brand’s carbon footprint. The brand requires that their partners abide by their Code of Conduct which includes ethical practices like fair wage and workers rights along with health and safety standards.
Additionally, LoveShackFancy prioritizes working with partners that support women’s career and educational opportunities. One partner in India is primarily female-owned and started a foundation to fund the education of the daughters of their employees, while another partner allows their women employees to work remotely due to travel restrictions because of their social, familial, and religious values.
GIVING BACK
“I’ve always been so proud we make our clothes in India,” says Cohen. “The artistry, the complicated weaving, the embroidery and beading are like no other and we would never be able to do any of it if we didn’t do it there.”
According to Forbes, LoveShackFancy is the only Made in India clothing brand to publicly take action against COVID-19 in India. They made direct donations to their Indian factories and donated proceeds to Priyanka Chopra’s Foundation through Give India.
On social media, the LoveShackFancy also advocates for social issues, especially that of women’s rights as the brand was female-founded and is currently female-led.
CRAFTSMANSHIP
LoveShackFancy prioritizes hiring skilled artisans in order to preserve craftsmanship and ancient art-making traditions. The brand uses a modern rendition of 1890 clothing production techniques like “...buttery distressed mesh with lace embroidered floral appliqués, hand-rolled flower details, and…Battenburg lace.”
Some other techniques include old-world hand blocking methods to design prints, handlooms to make jacquards, and hand-sewing to create sequined dresses. The hand-adorned beaded dresses are created by local artisans in the north of India. The artisan hand-stitches the sequins to washed mesh in various patterns, a process that can take over one-hundred hours.
SUSTAINABILITY
All of LoveShackFancy’s fabrics are vegan, cruelty-free, and organic. For example, most of the lingerie in the brand’s new intimate collection is made from tencel fibers which are sourced from eucalyptus trees.
The brand hand-dyes all of their fabrics with vegetable dyes and dyes from natural waste. Occasionally, they mix the dye with Bougainvillea flowers — which are native to Palm Beach — in order to emphasize the color of the dyed fabrics. As for the dyeing process, LoveShackFancy uses Batik and Shibori — ancient dyeing methods.
Most packaging is made from biodegradable poly bags, and most boxes and tape are made from recycled materials; all materials, including receipts are printed on recycled paper.
REUSING & UPCYCLING
LoveShackFancy recycles leftover fabric by reusing it as design elements for limited edition collections. During the height of COVID-19 pandemic, the brand created masks out of fabric scraps and donated a percent of the proceeds to support front line workers.
The brand also upcycles vintage pieces from flea markets. They once sold a collection of mini-skirts made from quilt scraps and another time sold silk slips with LoveShackFancy bespoke hand-sewn patches, lace trim, and other embellishments.
FUTURE GOALS
LoveShackFancy is hoping to make their main women’s line more size-inclusive in the near future. As of now, the size range is from size 00 to size 12. In an interview with Bustle, Cohen says that “...there are a lot of production issues, so the brand is working on partnering with two other companies to help create a more size-inclusive range.
During the summer of 2020, LoveShackFancy partnered with Target to release a limited collection of size-inclusive and affordable dresses. The collection was such a success that when it launched at 3am, it sold out in seconds.
FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION
Because of the more intricate and time-consuming production processes, along with the more expensive and sustainable materials used in production, most of the clothing items retail for a range of about $300 to $700. The garments are designed to be long-lasting; in an interview with Harper's Bazaar, Cohen says, “I like to think that LoveShackFancy is a brand that’s an investment, it can be passed on for generations – to your daughters, friends, I want every dress to tell a story.”
@loveshackfancy
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