Wow, remember 2008? Obama had just been elected president. Twilight was released. Beyoncé and Jaz-Z got married. We were still two years away from the invention of Instagram, Myspace was still a widely-used social network, and the iPhone 3G had just been introduced.
So, that’s where we were when season two of TLC’s Say Yes To The Dress aired.
This season focused much less on the interpersonal struggles of the consultants (god, remember Claudia?). Randy Fenoli is on the fringes of the series, but rarely made an appearance in any of the episodes – and with a very different persona than he has later on.
Several new dress designers were introduced in season two – so let’s take a look at the data breakdown.
Once again, Pnina Tornai is way over-represented on this show. I understand logically that’s because her designs are exclusive to Kleinfeld’s and that’s why they’re pushing her so much, but GOOD LORD. This is almost exactly the same percentage of dresses she had in season one, but the pool of other designers is far more diluted; while season one only had seven dress designers represented, season two had fourteen.
We’re starting to see some silhouettes change from the first season! Ballgown dropped from 39.1% of dresses to just 22.2%. A-line also decreased by half, and mermaid took a slight increase. My memory is that mermaid is a very popular silhouette in later seasons so I would expect to see that continue to grow.
We’re starting to see a shift towards higher dress budgets! The most common range is still $2,000 – $6,000, but there’s far more budgets above $6,000 and very few under $2,000. That’s a significant change from the first season.
I think there are a few factors contributing towards the budget increase – Kleinfeld’s increased profile as a high-fashion dress shop, and the popularity of the show. This season was filmed during 2007 so we haven’t seen the affect of the financial crisis on the show at this point, but I would expect to see some kind of change in season three.
Who knows! This show is wild and it’s not a great representation of real life. Bye beautiful!
