The Wedding Shoe Every It-Girl Bride Wants Is Finally Here
In 2017, I stepped into the small studio for Danielle Frankel’s just-launched bridal label. Its first collection featured unconventional wedding dress options like a white cinched blazer dress with a studded belt and lace thrown over the shoulders like a shawl, or an asymmetrical strapless gown with different-sized swaths of lace dripping from the waist.
At the time, I had not seen anything like it or encountered a brand that made the kind of unorthodox wedding dresses I could envision myself wearing. When I posted photos from the studio visit on my Instagram, I instantly received a handful of DMs from friends and followers saying this was how they wanted to walk down the aisle. Everyone asked for the designer and then remarked that they couldn’t believe they hadn’t discovered her sooner. In my article—the first featuring the brand—I characterized Danielle Frankel as the best bridal brand you’ve never heard of.
Now, nearly seven years later, everyone knows Danielle Frankel—not just by sight but by name. She isn’t just a wedding dress designer, but the wedding dress designer for cool girls who want something a little different on their big day.
When I walk into her showroom again in early August, it is an entirely new space with at least 2,000 more square feet. The walls are covered in a pale green paint and the floors are enveloped with golden yellow carpets. There are racks everywhere, holding hundreds of dresses illuminated by the light peering in from the windows. Glass cases in the middle of certain rooms display vintage ceramics and photos that feel like a time capsule of wedding bits and bobs from throughout the ages. “None of this was here when we first met,” Frankel says, laughing, upon giving me a tour of the space, which features multiple fitting rooms for brides-to-be, before walking over to a tiled desk and stating, “Well—this definitely wasn’t here.”
Atop the table are a series of white heels and flats in a line. I’m one of the first to see her newly launched wedding shoes—officially available starting today—in person. When I ask how she came to the decision to move into footwear, Frankel is direct: “It just makes sense!”
It does. In 2021, Manolo Blahnik collaborated with Frankel on a highly popular bridal collection that had brides thinking, Finally. But this time around, Frankel wanted the offerings to be more permanent. “Either [the customer] is already buying the gown from us, or it’s also an opportunity for people that aren’t wearing us to their wedding to get a piece of the brand.”
The inaugural collection features 10 new styles designed in the New York atelier and made in Italy. The pair I’m immediately drawn to is the hero style, the Kennedy pump, which has a satin detail that peels away from the tip, as if it is being undressed. The inspiration was a photo of an elegant neckline falling off a set of shoulders.
The Danielle Frankel universe is all about that tender feeling of getting dressed and slipping into a gown that feels like it could exist only in a dream. With this new launch, Frankel wanted to re-create that same sensation for your feet.
“We want to make women feel beautiful. That is the most important thing,” she says. “Beauty, grace, and elegance are all top of mind when I design. Aside from that, it’s about infusing modernity into that.” She pauses for a moment to note that while she doesn’t love that word, she isn’t sure how else to describe what she means. “There’s something so old about what we do, but there’s also something so new about what we do. It’s the balance of both that kind of works really well together. We’re using some really old-school techniques and design practices with a new and fresh and meaningful eye.”
Her eye is exactly why her footwear collection feels unlike anything else on the market. I had never seen anything like the Kennedy pump, but I had also never seen anything like the Nala pump, coated in a ruched satin, or the Beatrice flat and Coco heel, which are covered in hand-painted floral blooms. Frankel slips into a pair of the flats and notes how more and more brides are opting for footwear that is more demure. “And they even look good with what I’m wearing!” she says of the shoes.
She is envisioning some customers will buy just the shoes, to wear for special occasions other than their wedding. And even if those customers do wear the shoes to their nuptials, they can be worn again and again far more easily than one of her dresses.
So: While Danielle Frankel may no longer be the best bridal designer you’ve never heard of, she is certainly still the coolest one you do know.
Danielle Frankel’s bridal footwear collection is now available for preorder at daniellefrankelstudio.com, and will be available both online and through selected retailers by early October 2024. Prices range from $790 to $1,190.
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