Sophie attended Parsons School of Design after Dickinson for a second B.A., But due to her liberal-arts background she had a more diverse repertoire than the usual Parsons student. “Vogue was never my Bible,” she asserts.

Dickinsonians with a flair for the fun side of fashion are the focus of our cover feature for summer. You’ll encounter designers Sophie Simmons ’94 and Kate Duvall ’04, company co-owner Scott Beaumont ’75, marketing professionals Jeff Funk ’91 and Marisa Jacobs ’78, boutique co-owner Debbie Dickson ’82, and photographer Doug Inglish ’91 and get a peek at how the presidential style of William G. Durden ’71 evolved.

• Sophie Simmons ’94 (below)
• Kate Duvall ’04
• Scott Beaumont ’75
• Jeff Funk ’91
• Marisa Jacobs ’78
• Debbie Dickson ’82
• Doug Inglish ’91
• William G. Durden ’71

Sophie’s Success

Thread co-founder makes being a bridesmaid feel fun not frumpy

Five years ago Senior Editor Sherri Kimmel interviewed Sophie Simmons ’94 as she and partner Beth Blake prepared to launch a line of bridemaids’ dresses called Thread. Now there are Thread stores in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and their dresses were recently described in People magazine as the ones that bridesmaids still love to wear after the wedding is over. This spring Kimmel reconnected with Simmons at her store just off Fifth Avenue.

So Sophie, we last met in July of 1999 in Beth’s loft apartment across from the Knitting Factory. You had a few sample dresses there that you were showing me, and you were in the midst of writing a business plan for Thread.
Our business plan was sort of our Declaration of Independence—why we were doing this, what we thought we could do with it.

You said that you were really glad you had gone to a liberal-arts college like Dickinson, where you learned to write, instead of just a straight design school.
Yes, absolutely. You have to be up to multi-tasking, which I think a liberal-arts education makes you [prepared to do]. You have to do math and meet a certain amount of requirements, and I think it makes you more versatile.

So do you think it gave you a leg up in actually visualizing the company and getting it going?
I was a fine-arts major at Dickinson, so I knew a lot about art history. My bible was never Vogue, or those [types of] magazines, so I drew my inspiration from a lot of different places, rather than just from the fashion trends.

Are you using that background now, in your designs?
Definitely. It’s a combination of a lot of [things]. The 1950s look has been a recurring theme in our collection, and that allows us to make a lot of constructive dresses, which makes girls of many different body types all look similar. And that’s what you need in the bridesmaid’s world; nobody can look totally different than the others. We do a lot of corseted stuff, and I’m made to wear a lot of hats here, not just designer. I’ve become basically a production manager.

That’s what is so amazing, because five years ago you were in the thinking stages, just thinking about starting a Web site. But nothing had really happened.
We had just gotten an ad in Martha Stewart [Living]. So we had two or three customers. Then everything sort of happened [all at once, especially after Sept. 11]. It was a really difficult time for most entrepreneurs. But, strangely, it was good for our business, because a lot of people made emotional decisions at that time. So there was actually a huge rise in weddings. We also wholesaled our cocktail dresses at Bergdorf [Goodman]’s & [Henri] Bendel’s. Our collection has very bright colors, and they’re very optimistic dresses. We became the best sellers at Bergdorf’s & Bendel’s after Sept. 11, because a lot of people just needed joy and were not looking for distressed, destroyed, deconstructed dresses. They were looking for pretty flower prints and happy sorbets. And we attribute our success to a sort of mood that happened after Sept. 11.

What would you say makes Thread distinctive?
Our angle is that bridesmaids are people too. We offer really good customer service. Our sales girls are really nice, young, sort of hip girls and not dowdy. Our samples haven’t been tried on 800 times, and we don’t just have size 10s, so you can never actually try on your size. I think that our design concept of our dresses is very democratic. We want every girl, from size 0 to 22, to feel comfortable in what they wear. It should not be this humiliating process. I can see it in wedding publications, like Wedding Bells—that it’s becoming a hipper market—and that people who have a sense of clothing are designing now. The world of weddings is becoming much more sophisticated.

You talked about the ’50s look. Do you have a ’50s actress you see in your mind wearing these dresses?
You know, I don’t really think of an actress. I think of those Irving Penn pictures, the really lady-like time of dressing. I remember seeing that movie recently, Far From Heaven, that Julianne Moore was in. That sort of “lady” time is really appropriate for weddings. A lot of people associate formal with full-length. I think that a 3/4-length, showing a little ankle, can be way more sophisticated and just as dressy.

It’s great that you visualized this dream, and it’s become reality. Does it seem amazing to you?
Completely. In fact, when I describe to people what I do, I feel like I’m talking about somebody else. It feels very surreal. It hasn’t really been a struggle. Beth is definitely a dream come true, as a partner. We’re 50-50. When we don’t agree on something, it’s usually because we have to think about it, and we have to talk it through. It’s not a confrontational thing.

Do you make decisions like what next season’s colors are going to be?
Those are definitely things that we discuss. And, “Should we open a store in this area or that area? Should we focus more on wholesale or should we work on retail? Can we afford to do a really pricey new ad campaign?” That kind of stuff is really the meat of our discussion.

And how do you decide, say, on a color that’s going to be your signature for a season?
We start collecting stuff for the year. Just images. It could be a painting or just important colors. Beth is much more on the customer end of the thing, and I’m much more on the production end. So I’m trying to protect our production and its fluidity and our profit margins. And she is more concerned with offering more to the customer. I kind of want to get out of this “mom-and-pop shop” situation. So is it more important for us to build our brand name? Or is it more important for us to start producing to wider audiences? My dresses start at $270 and go to about $550, but I think that part of the population—that will spend that much money on a bridesmaid’s dress—is very, very limited. There’s a whole part of the world that I think I would be much more available to if my dresses were priced at $180. But I can’t produce dresses for $180 unless I’m producing overseas, which is another thing that I feel weird about.

Making it more mass market would make quality control harder to maintain?
Absolutely. And also, we’ve been very much hand to mouth. We take an order. We take their money. Then we produce it. While, if I were to be producing larger quantities, I would have to go in debt. And carry over massive inventory, and that’s a very scary concept to me. But it’s going to have to happen, unfortunately.

Do you plan to double your sales, or what?
Yes. We want to hold 10 more wholesale accounts. We want to open one more store by 2005. So, whenever Thread makes some money, it just goes right back into opening a showroom or hiring another person.

You mentioned selling 6,000 dresses a year. Are all 6,000 sold? Or do you have inventory sitting around?
I do have some inventory. But it’s just from miscommunication between the salesgirl and me, so I cut the wrong color. We donate them to the local proms for kids that are underprivileged. So there are a lot of girls up in the Bronx wearing Thread dresses to the prom. It’s really cool. Actually, we’re starting, this year, the junior bridesmaids’ [line]. We designed dresses for girls who were 2 years old to 9 years old and then from 16 on, but there’s that whole slice of time where you’re really freaking out about your body. So I’ve been going to middle schools and measuring all these girls. They’re kind of the forgotten people. I’m really enjoying doing this research and hanging out with these little girls.

That’s fun research. Sociological.
Totally. Bridesmaids are an entire social study. The world of bridesmaids, the bridal world; Beth and I always say that if this company goes under we have a sitcom.

When I tried to get in touch with you recently, you were in London. Were you there for business?
Yeah. I took my 15 favorite dresses. It’s almost like an audition. You have to present. And there are five people standing there, with stone faces. And I’m trying on the dresses. And I’m trying to explain what the color groups are and what the price points are. Now we’ve opened an account in London. We’ll be selling at Selfridges. You know I grew up in London and Paris. I never dreamed I would be hanging at Selfridges, but starting in June … Now we’re kind of all over the place. This is our wholesale list over here. We’re in California, Georgia, L.A. And we’ve just opened three more accounts. We’re in Alabama now …

So, the first five years: amazing progress. What’s up for the next five years?
My goal is to change our production. And to find a way, maybe, to work locally. I really feel strongly about keeping my business in the states. I like the control that I have. And no matter how you feel or how you look at it or what they tell you, if you are producing in China, you are somehow a part of this kind of very, very icky slave trade. And it’s not something that I really want to be a part of.

You don’t want to succeed on the backs of somebody else.
Yeah. But, also, I do want to keep this company successful and competitive. What I was thinking of doing was creating a diffusion line, which would be my dresses, mass-produced somewhere else and brought here. It’s hard to survive little. So you have to have different grades of your line: the Thread “white” line and the Thread “blue” line. The “blue” line would be much more available and within a lower price point. But still allowing ourselves to have a more expensive, exclusive line.

So what do you do during the slow times?
Design. Get scared. Because all of a sudden our funds deplete. But we always know that around Christmas is when people propose. I can get very cynical, because it’s so predictable. But for a business, it’s reassuring. The high time is New Year’s Eve, because we get a lot of blushing brides coming in here around January and February. It’s funny. It’s interesting. I really do like the idea of marriage. I think that it’s a beautiful concept.

Weddings can put a big focus on self-esteem issues.
Well, it’s not unlike being with Thread. A bridesmaid is the underdog of the bridal world. She’s the forgotten girl. When I first started doing bridesmaids’ dresses, I was a little humiliated. I would say, “I’m doing bridesmaids’ dresses.” And people would say, “Well, they’re not ugly dresses, are they?” And I would say, “No. I hope they’re not.” I’m making one of the most uncool things cool. And I kind of love that. Just sort of changing the idea of that. That being a bridesmaid can be fun.

Read more about Sophie Simmons ’94 in this 1999 article from the Dickinson Magazine. Sophie's Choice