Finally, season three of Say Yes To The Dress is behind us. At this point in 2009, we’re two seasons into Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the iPhone 3 has been released, and the United States is deep in a recession (a major plot point on this season of the show.) Flat-ironed hair abounds, everyone has got black eyeliner, and absolutely no one is sporting Instagram face.
Kleinfeld’s is still largely a local bridal store, with most of the clients coming from New York, New Jersey, or other states along the eastern seaboard. This season introduced new consultant Carmel, got rid of the informative graphic, and Nicole’s promotion to manager.
This season is continuing to evolve the formula of Say Yes To The Dress. We have less of a focus on consultant drama (but a little more backstory, with Sarah’s engagement) and much more Randy Fenoli, who appears in almost every episode by this point.
Let’s take a look at the data!
Take this with an enormous grain of sale. Since this season got rid of my beloved Informative Dress Graphic, there are very few instances where we get a designer credit on a gown. As you can see, that is overwhelmingly Pnina Tornai, due to the fact that her gowns are exclusive to Kleinfeld. Most of the other dress credits came from other designers have trunk shows, such as Kenneth Poole.
Here’s a comparison across all three seasons:
Pnina Tornai remains the Queen of Kleinfeld’s.
I miss her (the Informative Dress Graphic™)
We’re starting to see an increase in the mermaid silhouette (from 17.4% in season one) and trumpet. Ballgown has been slowly decreasing, from a height of almost 40% in season one. This is right in line with my prediction. We also got our first pantsuit this season!
Oh ballgown….. how the mighty have fallen
Finally, we’ve got budgets. This was the year of the 2008 recession, so there is a pretty major shift in the dress budgets on the show.
Almost 70% of the dress budgets were between $2,000 and $6,000. This is a fairly significant raise from season two. We also saw a significant drop-off in dresses that cost more than $6,000.
I strongly suspect that in the next 2-3 seasons we are going to see the dress budgets massively increase. I think there’s a few reasons for that:
- The economic recovery
- The introduction of Instagram
- The raised profile of the show attracting richer brides
But we will see! Bye beautiful!
