David’s Bridal Leans Into High End Designers With New Retail Concept

David’s Bridal Inc.’s newest retail concept store, Diamonds & Pearls, is expanding its footprint to the Greater Boston area with a new unit in Burlington, Mass., following a successful debut in Delray Beach, Florida. The store sells affordable dresses priced from $500, up to luxury brands in one destination.

Kelly Cook, CEO of David’s Bridal, said the boutique-style retail format offers a curated selection of upscale bridal gowns and occasion dresses for brides, mothers of the bride, mothers in law, bridesmaids and more. The idea for Diamonds & Pearls was born simply by listening to customers, brides to be who said they wanted more higher end options such as Marchesa and Viola Chan, to name a few.

There are 195 David’s stores in the U.S. with international locations in Canada and franchise stores in Mexico. David’s Bridal, with an estimated $429.7 million in sales volume in 2024, according to IBISWorld, twice filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and was acquired in 2023 by CION Investment Corp. It was able to skirt liquidation before embarking on its current strategy.

David’s Bridal in 2026 will take over production of the Vera Wang Bride Collection, an alliance announced this year. “David’s Bridal and Vera Wang, partners again,” said the David’s Bridal web site. The Vera Wang HAUTE business will continue to be operated independently by the designer.

The retailer now offers Vera Wang Bride and occasion dresses at Diamonds & Pearls. David’s Bridal in 2026 will supervise the entire production process of Vera Wang Bride from first drawing to last seam while Diamonds & Pearls on Nov. 6 will re-launch Vera Wang White, a diffusion line offering refined and modern dresses at a more affordable price point.

Cook in a recent interview explained how Diamonds & Pearls came to be. “We discovered that 90% of all brides in the U.S. are in the David’s bridal funnel,” she said. “Obviously that’s more than we were converting. The brides coming to the web site and physical stores weren’t buying their dresses in those places. We thought, ‘Wait a minute, we have brides coming to us and they’re not finding what they’re looking for.’ We took the next step and we said, ‘Okay, we need to talk to couture brides.’ We also needed to speak to budget brides because we weren’t converting them either.”

Couture brides – by David’s definition, those spending $3,000 or more on a gown – had several priorities the retailer wasn’t fulfilling. “We did some research and found three very interesting things: they wanted more couture brand offerings, more higher end, more fashion-oriented styles and more options. We also learned that the experience of buying the dress was very important to them. They wanted it curated, elevated and romanticized. The third thing they wanted that none of our competitors have, is the ability to marry digitally everything they were doing stylistically for their wedding.

“What that means is they wanted this whole thing to work together within their theme and they wanted to do that digitally right inside the store,” Cook explained. “That’s the one thing that we’ve got that no one else has and that was the genesis of this endless aisle and bringing wedding planning to the digital screen.”

“Coming soon: a first-of-its-kind collaboration of David’s AI-powered tool, Vera | Planner, transforming wedding planning,” the David’s web site said. “Be among the first wedding pros to join the Vera Wang Bride x Pearl Couture platform— the future of luxury wedding planning.”

Danielle Fairchild, VP and head of retail at NuOrder by Lightspeed praised Diamonds & Pearls, but said David’s has its work cut out. “It’s hard to break into luxury,” Fairchild said. “David’s is better known for mid-market and buying on a budget. It’s hard to go up. It’s easier for a luxury designer to go down. Luxury is all about the experience, so it depends on how they do it.” Separate stores, not shop-in-shops in a David’s store is better, but it’s a big investment, Fairchild said, adding, “It’s not going to be an easy feat.”

Cook said she architected Diamonds & Pearls with empathy, leaning into her own experience as a bride years ago. She tried to get inside brides’ heads and fulfill their fantasy of shopping for and buying the perfect dress for the most important day of their lives. The idea was to make them feel like a Disney princess.

“I love the image of a bride saying, ‘I found the one.’ It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Their number one emotion for 18 months is anxiety,” Cook said, adding that brides-to-be can become overwhelmed by “the millions and millions of details of planning a wedding.

“Ronnie [Rothstein,] who owns Kleinfeld Bridal [with Mara Urshel, and John Costantino,] does a really good job of creating a beautiful fantasy,” Cook said of the legendary bridal emporium on 20th Street in Manhattan, which sets the tone for wedding shopping with Champagne and other perks. There’s a 3-hour VIP platinum experience available Wednesday through Sunday for $500, for example. “He has 150 brands in that store and he does a beautiful job.”

Cook said she’d love to renew her vows with her second husband simply so that she could wear one of the dresses that Diamonds & Pearls stocks. “Every day, I tell my husband, Scott, ‘I have to get married again. I have to walk down the aisle in one of these dresses, they’re so pretty,’” she said. “I buy them sometimes because they’re works of art. When you think about Viola [Chan, our head of couture and design,] she’s actually dressed more brides than any living designer ever.”

Cook’s secret to success is the fact that she empathises with brides to be. “In addition to the stress of finding a wedding dress, there’s also the anxiety of how the gown will fit, given weight fluxuations leading up to the big day,” she said. “Most women don’t like some part of their bodies. Then, they realize that the wedding pictures are forever and that their grandkids are going to see them, which causes even more anxiety.

Cook, who went to school at night, piling on math courses at junior college, got a job as a finance and logistics analyst at Continental Airlines. “I’m very grateful for that time,” she said. In addition to Continental, Cook worked at Waste Management, the largest trash company in the world. “I was there for three years and then a friend of mine said, ‘You’ve got to get into retail, you move fast, you think fast and you want to see the action fast.’ Neither Continental nor Waste Management was fast.”

Cook embarked on a retail career rising to executive positions at DSW, Kmart and Pier 1 Imports. She assumed the top job at David’s in April. “I went from planes to trash to shoes. When you’re a female executive in a trash company, you say, ‘I’m a woman of trash but don’t call me a trashy woman,’” she quipped.

The Diamonds & Pearls boutique format is 3,000 square feet or less, and according to Cook, the concept is ripe for expansion. “We’ve identified 100 locations that we’re evaluating over the next few years,” Cook said. “We have a [franchise] shop-in-shop right now in Mexico City with the Liverpool department store in their largest store and that’s exceeding our sales plan.

“One of the things we’re evaluating at Liverpool is how do we modulate the experience to be more like a Diamonds & Pearls store,” Cook said. “It’s like a mini David’s right now. We want to make sure that we take the right steps, so right now, we’re looking at evaluating 100 locations for Diamonds & Pearls.”

“I remember all the feelings,” Cook said of being a fiancée. “You just want someone to be kind to you and understanding. There’s nothing like trying to get Mommy and Mommy-in-Law to agree, right. You want somebody to be kind and somebody to be focused on what you want and what you’re feeling. Women are concerned with their body and they’ve got all that stress.”

So far, Diamonds & Pearls seems to be resonating with its target audience. “Our test store in Florida is smashing our self-plans,” Cook said. “It’s beating what we thought our projections would be, and we’re still learning. Brides want more and more brands. We’re selling out of couture. We sold out of Marchesa. We’re always learning, always trying to do better, and always elevating the experience and making her feel like the queen she deserves to be.”