We need to talk about this dress. it's just on my heart in my brain I just need to talk about the strawberry dress. Guys, I just got a notification the dress is arriving today. I want this dress so bad. So I've seen this dress all over Instagram. The strawberry dress! The strawberry tulle dress The strawberry dress! [Dramatic Music] The strawberry dress! The strawberry dress is all over the internet. And today we're going to analyze why.
The dress was released a year ago in July 2019 by an independent New York based designer Lirica Matoshi. It's basically a fluffy midi dress covered in glittery strawberries. When you analyze the design you can notice some vintage fashion influences, I think. Especially with the puffy sleeves which remind me of 1930s fashion Then you get the v-shape neckline and gathered bust which looks a little bit 1940s to me. And the overall length and shape of the dress is reminiscent of the 1950s dresses. The dress went viral recently, mostly I think because of TikTok. the 15th photo in your camera roll is the reason why you're single. This is mine and it makes perfect sense. Even though it's been around for more than a year now -- [slapping bug] Get the hell out! Come on [slap] Why did it go viral? And why did it go viral now? So experts at Vogue and other influential sites are trying to analyze the trend -- [SLAPS BUG] Oh my god, come on. -- And they point out that because of the pandemic a lot of people long for this kind of romanticism and escapism And this dress offers that. Some others claim it's a case of, like, depression buying where you're trying to buy stuff to make yourself feel better about your situation I personally think it's just another case of something random going completely viral It's difficult to analyze what goes viral and why, and it's difficult to analyze the mechanisms behind it. Why did it go viral? Who knows?
Why did a picture of egg go viral on Instagram? Probably for the exactly same reason. I remember first seeing the dress in January, I think and thinking Well that's pretty! and I think it's just a kind of a dress that everyone finds pretty. Combine it with an internet hype and you get the strawberry dress! As Vogue has written: And I think that's pretty accurate. Now as with every online phenomenon the dress has already stirred some controversy You may be thinking the strawberry dress? The fluffy puffy pink perfection can be controversial? The first thing that people got really upset about and discussed very heatedly was the dress's price. From what I understand the clothes are produced in a factory in Kosovo, which is where the designer is from. And the dress currently costs $490. People argue that's a lot of money, you can get the same type of tulle online. But honestly, I think we're just too spoiled by fast fashion. I'm, not in the fashion industry, I have no idea how things work and how much money everything costs, But I'm gonna try and analyze where the price comes from. I buy fabric frequently and let me tell you, if you want something that's good quality you need to pay for it, and it's not, like, ten dollars. You need to pay, like, sixty dollars per yard for something that's remotely good. It's very unlikely you'll get a high quality fabric for cheaper than forty dollars and you probably noticed that the dress is very fluffy and it's - it's the thing that makes it so appealing So there's a lot of fabric involved. If you gather a thin fabric, it's a lot. Like, I made an 1860s dress out of really thin lightweight cotton and I think I used like six meters for the skirt itself. Because when you gather something that's thin it kind of disappears Now I'm not a professional seamstress but based on the photo of the dress There is at least two to three yards of fabric in the skirt itself Especially that is quite long, it reaches I think to your mid-calf, and you need one more yard at least for the bodice and the fluffy puffy sleeves which always eat a lot of fabric because they quite wide when you lay them flat. So that gives us optimistically four yards of tulle. And assuming it's the best quality or it's custom made it's definitely not cheaper than 60 dollars per yard And you also need lining. Lining is usually considerably cheaper, but because it's a high-end brand I'm guessing they're not, like taking the cheapest lining out there. So I'm assuming it's minimum ten dollars per yard, which is again, very optimistic. So they would need around three yards of fabric at least for the lining. Again, these are, like, estimations out of nowhere. I have no idea what I'm doing. I've noticed there is also another type of tulle used for decoration, which is - it doesn't have the strawberries on. I'm assuming this one would also be cheaper, let's say around ten dollars per yard. But the decoration is gathered and layered and it's really tight So I'd say half a yard or a yard at least would be used for a single dress. Plus you also need a couple of dollars for the string, for the zipper, and the threads used. That gives us around $285 for just the fabrics and materials. Now even if the tulle is actually cheaper and I overestimated the prices because they have wholesale discounts, because they buy in bulk It would still not be cheaper than a $150 for just the materials, and remember there's someone that needs to make this. And there's someone that needs to sell these.
So let's think about who makes these. Let's assume there is a single seamstress making a single dress. (Because it's not always like that, sometimes one person does that, the other person does the decoration or something.) But let's assume it's a single seamstress, and let's assume it's a Kosovian seamstress because it's probably cheaper to produce the dress there. Now the minimal hourly wage in Kosovo is $1.16, and it sounds pretty low but compared to other Balcan countries, it's pretty similar. And just so you know, the minimal hourly wage in Bangladesh where most of the fast fashion clothes are produced is nine cents It's nine cents per hour, and I'm pretty sure some workers are paid less. That's why when you go to the Urban Outfitters or -- I don't know -- any other chain store, that's why the clothes are cheap. Because they're produced for free basically. I'm guessing it would take a couple of hours for a skilled seamstress to make a dress like this. Um, let's say three hours. I don't know. So this seamstress gets paid around $16 per dress. But her employer also has to cover the insurance, and other costs as well. So I'm guessing the overall cost of making a single dress would be $20. I don't know anything about the independent clothing industry so I could be completely wrong. Now the seamstress doesn't just look at the design and then go. You need someone to make the design into a pattern and then scale the pattern for all sizes. You need a good pattern maker which is usually quite expensive. The pattern alone could be $400 or more. And granted you will only pay it once, but you have to pay it in advance before you release the dress, and before you know it if it actually sells, or if it's worth it So that's the risk you as a designer are taking. You're investing into something having no idea whether it's gonna come back to you. So now you have the pattern, you bought the fabrics, the seamstress made the dress, and what's next? You need to sell the dress, and I don't mean, like, share it with your family and friends No, for some reason we know about the strawberry dress. It hasn't appeared out of nowhere. It wasn't like someone saw it at a shop window one day and then posted about it online No, it appeared from nowhere because someone put a lot of time, and work, and effort into promoting it so you need to dedicate yourself full-time to building your brand or you need to hire someone really good and expensive to do it for you. You need to pay for the ads You need to pay for a promotion. You need to handle out free stuff for celebrities so they hopefully will show it somewhere. Until people realize that your product stands out So the dresses price is not only the cost of making it, but it's also supposed to pay back the hours and days and months spent trying to sell it. But I think the most overlooked aspect of the price is the design. We're basically paying for the design, you pay for someone's creative idea that sold the clothing to you. Would the strawberry dress be so appealing without the puffy sleeves? Or if the tulle flounce wasn't there at the bottom of the hem? Who knows? You could say it's a simple dress and anyone could come up with a similar design. But they didn't though, did they? When I look at Lirica's works, I see great design. She knows what she's doing. She has her vision. She has, like, signature looks, signature style. And I see the type of design I wouldn't mind paying $500 for. Now, if the strawberry dress was in fact sold by a chain store, like, a fast-fashion, really cheap chain store Then $500 would be a scandalous price. Because it would be made of 50 cents per yard tulle, by workers that are paid 7 cents an hour. Luckily, it's not. And frankly with smaller brands like that It's honestly up to [the] designer how much they want to charge for the design. She could be charging five thousand dollars for the dress and it's only up to us whether we're gonna pay that or not. You could choose just not to buy it. And of course as with anything remotely popular, the dress is already being super copied online It's just the rip-offs are everywhere, and it's obviously all sold for a cheaper price. Because it doesn't have to cost that much does it? And apart from being straight up stealing someone else's hard work, I could take a long time trying to explain why a six dollar strawberry dress would not feel or look the same as the $500 one But you know what? Instead of that I'm just gonna show you the picture. So here is the original strawberry dress And here's what you can get on Aliexpress (and it also appears on eBay and Etsy I think) So it's like, "Mom, can we get a strawberry dress?" We have strawberry dress at home! Strawberry dress at home: The only good part of the dress is these It only has a slip underneath, and it's like that. These are not attached, I had to tie them myself. Like there is -- there's like a weird... You can see plastic... it's literally just-- It's awful! You can clearly see there's a lot less fabric involved, the shape is not there anymore, the fluff is gone. Even the strawberries look kind of sad. It's just wrong. It doesn't look right, it doesn't look right on a person. Don't buy knockoffs guys. It's not worth it. I know it's tempting, but it's not worth it. So another controversy is that this dress is only being noticed now. Because it's not a new dress and it has been worn publicly since at least winter, if not earlier. So the first time I, and probably many others, saw the dress was back in January. Because I follow one of Tess Holliday's hair stylists, and she shared a picture of Tess in the strawberry dress on Grammy's red carpet. Now Tess Holliday is a plus size model and she wore the dress and she was instantly criticized for it. Like, people were just like: ehhhhh "It's too much fun for red carpet" and "it's not serious enough" and I remember the first thing I thought was, "Damn that's a perfect red carpet dress." It made me go on the designer's website and stare at the clothing, picking which one I would wear to the Oscars. Fast forward to half a year later and people are suddenly thinking the strawberry dress is "it." So Tess called out people on liking the dress only once they saw it on skinny girls. And, I mean it's a bold statement, but I have to agree that it's weird how a pretty well-known celebrity wears a dress to the Grammys and that was criticized or ignored, and the very same dress goes viral now. But at the same time as I said, it's difficult to predict what goes viral, so I'd say this is a shady case. So overall I'd say it's a nice phenomenon because it shines light on some really good work. Like I love Lirica's design, she also has a sister who's also a designer and both of them do great stuff. And if I'm ever lucky enough to attend a really serious event that would require me to wear a really fancy dress I would probably just save up some money and get one of these dresses because they're really nice It's the type of stuff that you draw as a child on a princess and you kind of want to wear it, but you never had the reason to do so. And maybe that's why the dress is so popular, because it gives you this childhood fantasy dream/princess vibes. I don't know, let me know what you think about it. Let me know if anyone's got it or if anyone's got a knockoff and now regrets it. Don't be shy I want to - I want to know it and yeah Stay tuned for more Stuff
