Marriages are made in heaven and so are wedding gowns! While Winnie Chlomin Lee, co-founder and creative director of Winnie Couture, a world-renowned wedding attire brand based in Beverly Hills, California, leaves the choice of the former to the concerned partners, she ensures that the bride and her gown are made for each other.
The vision of Winnie Couture is to build a bridal fashion brand that truly empowers women to be the best versions of themselves. A franchisee who partners with the brand is capacitated to fulfill innumerable women’s dreams and own a global fashion brand in the wedding industry which is zero to none. We believe in “Love What You Do. Do What You Love.” Empowered with the “Winnie Experience”, a proven business success, the franchisees are provided with the tools to succeed and become part of a team whose business is to transform every woman into a unique, spectacular bride!
Who wouldn’t want to be in an environment to celebrate love with others every day?
From Imagination to Creation
When sweethearts wed, memories of this most momentous day are to be created for posterity in the form of films and photographs. The bride must appear in all her glory and thus the search for THE gown begins. The buck stops as soon as she steps into the world of the Winnie Couture, with its extensive range of styles and designs.
The value proposition of the company is to create dresses as unique as the women who wear them. The flagship stores, also known as “Bridal Dreamlands”, promote comfort and relaxation, ensuring that every bride feels beautiful, joyful, and confident. The brand firmly adheres to the belief that on her special day, “how a bride feels is just as important as how she looks”.
From working with pen and paper to silk and charmeuse, Winnie has come a long way. Winnie Couture brand has become a leader in the fashion and bridal industry, her creations have graced the covers of magazines, walked the red carpet, and stunned at celebrity weddings, adorning such beautiful and talented women as Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Aniston, Taraji P. Henson, Lea Michele and countless others. But Winnie doesn’t work just with celebrities—she designs for all women. Her collections exude a signature mix of trendy and timeless elements. In fact, the moment a woman puts on a Winnie Couture gown it kisses each curve and compliments every contour of her body, instantly transforming her into the world’s most beautiful bride.
A Walk in Bridal Dreamland
The moment a bride to be steps into a Winnie’s bridal dreamland, she’s guided into a world of luxury, romance, and high fashion, almost like entering a fairytale, where she is the fairy princess. The professional stylist assigned to the bride assists her to find the perfect dress and bring her personal vision to reality, thus creating a highly personalized shopping experience. From shimmering satin to European lace, every Winnie Couture gown is handcrafted using the finest fabrics. Besides ensuring a flawless fit, the design team gives brides the option to customize their dresses. However, comfort is not forsaken, and the aim is to make the bride feel easy but look amazing.
Winnie strongly feels that “the process of helping a bride find the perfect dress for one of the most important days of her life is exhilarating.”
The Winnie Experience
Every Winnie’s bridal dreamland provides a decadently furnished and tranquil environment for brides to find their perfect dress. Housing over 200 gowns, each Winnie flagship is complete with spacious bridal suites, where brides and their beloved guests can privately experience the intricacies of Winnie’s extensive selection of designer gowns. The romantic ambiance is illuminated by opulent chandeliers with hints of Swarovski elements radiating from the couture gowns. Intimate fitting spaces, plush furnishings, glamorous décor and an overall feeling of luxury and relaxation will provide the perfect backdrop for the most special bridal moments.
The Winnie Couture collection is filled with gorgeous, scintillating details and whimsically romantic silhouettes. The latest styles are leaning towards the soft and airy dresses with layer texture skirts that give off an angelic vibe. Also in vogue are illusion necklines and contouring silhouettes. Detachable skirts and sleeves are in, so there’s an emphasis on the multi-functional. There’s a rise in lightweight lace, tulle and organza fabrics sans embroidery or embellishment, just plain and genuine ways that bring an airy twist to the whole essence of a bride. It adds up to a very breezy, somewhat soul-soothing tone and feel.
The flagship offers a complete selection of crystal belts, delicate veils, and statement jewelry to complete the entire bridal vision. Importantly, Winnie’s bridal dreamlands are often venues for heartfelt joyousness and celebration where brides are given the opportunity of jubilant bonding with friends and family.
A Celebration of Love
At Winnie Couture, brides and their loved ones create lasting memories with lots of love, laughter, and champagne toasts! Each bride has her own unique story to tell, and Winnie thrives on highlighting these special moments.
It’s a place for brides to share priceless memories with their loved ones—a place to reconnect with friends and family who are brought together by the exciting task of finding “The One”. Where best friends are the most supportive entourage and where loving parents witness their precious daughter blossoming into the beautiful bride, they have always envisioned her to be. A truly magical moment that fills the room with joy when the bride sees her reflection: a blushing bride in her dream dress with tears of happiness as she says yes to not only the gown, but to a new chapter of her life.
“These are the unique moments that keep us going at Winnie Couture: the celebration of brides and the love they have for their friends, family, and themselves,” says Winnie.
High Velocity Trajectory
The idea of the highly successful brand emerged, as so many startups do, from a gap that Winnie identified in the market when she got engaged to Chris and began to hunt for the perfect wedding gown to suit her style. After a long despairing search, Winnie created her own gorgeous dress. She married her life partner Chris Lee in 1999 and inspired by the success of her designing experiments, decided to help other women find their dream dress.
Winnie Couture was co-founded by Winnie and her husband Chris in 2001. Thereafter, driven by passion and devotion to the bridal fashion industry, they’ve gained continuous success. After just a few short seasons, the couple has positioned the Winnie Couture brand as one of the fastest growing, most-in-demand bridal collections across the country and in just less than five years, their wedding dresses have become available in over 150 stores. Winnie’s dresses have earned a reputation for uncompromising craftsmanship. This devotion to quality has gained her a global following and made her one of the most respected designers in the wedding industry.
Winnie Couture wedding dresses are distributed through Winnie Couture flagship stores and finest retailers throughout the world. The brand is now regarded as a global leader in the bridal and couture fashion industry, continuously developing a range of unique and luxurious wedding attire that is consistent with the brand’s values. The brand has expanded across North America, providing services in various cities like San Francisco, Nashville, Charlotte, Boston, Chicago, Beverly Hills, Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas.
Featured in prominent high-fashion publications such as People, Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar, Brides, The Knot, Modern Luxury, The New York Times, Glamour, etc and frequent appearances on National TV shows and Hollywood films, Winnie’s profoundly feminine gowns are known for their immaculate craftwork and impeccable fit. Aside from the bridal collection, Winnie’s meticulously luxurious red-carpet designs have become favorites amongst industry insiders, Hollywood celebrities and fashionistas. Influencers around the globe have visited their flagships and documented their experiences and their weddings through Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook and YouTube, all of which have fuelled Winnie Couture’s explosive growth, taking them from a single shop to hundreds of authorized retailers, eight flagship stores and multiple franchise locations.
Choice to Franchise
“Following the success of our flagship stores in major cities like Beverly Hills, Chicago, Houston and Atlanta, we were inundated with franchise requests. The wedding industry is very lucrative and growing fast,” says Winnie.
Winnie Couture decided to make the experience available to numerous brides across America who wanted the exquisite gown of their dreams. Franchising was also the way to steer the business towards growth. “We realized that brides were having to travel from all over America to visit our boutiques and then travelling back home to get married. Many of these brides fell in love with the Winnie Couture experience and wanted to share it with others in their hometown,” says Winnie.
“Since then, we’ve fulfilled the dreams of others, empowered female entrepreneurs, giving them the resources, knowledge and support necessary to run a successful franchise,” continues Winnie. “We provide training to our franchisees to generate traffic, increase sales productivity and profitability. Every store has a great team of stylists who are knowledgeable and professional. The Franchisees get the advantage of an international known brand, successful training and sales strategy and marketing guidance for their franchise. They also receive support in site selection, lease negotiation, build-out plans, decor purchases and securing inventory. The result is more customers, greater brand awareness, and higher profits.” Winnie Couture charges a franchise fee of $49,500.
CSR @ Winnie Couture
“We believe in giving back to the community. Some of the causes we contribute to include the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Susan G. Komen, Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, and donating wedding gowns to women in need. We also founded the Haute Mask by Winnie Couture collection, the world’s first bridal mask collection, with 100% of the proceeds going to Direct Relief, a non-profit organization that is providing personal protective equipment and essential medical items to U.S. and international health workers responding to COVID-19,” shares Winnie. At the start of the pandemic, when healthcare workers faced a critical shortage of protective masks, the team at Winnie Couture sewed and distributed over 5,000 masks to healthcare workers, hospitals, and senior living communities.
The 20th anniversary collection
As a part of the brand’s ongoing 20th anniversary celebrations, Winnie is unveiling a special limited-edition collection inspired by iconic Winnie Couture designs. “We are proud to have dressed brides from all over the world in the past couple of decades and the best is yet to come.” smiles Winnie.
Despite her success, Winnie has never stopped being inspired by the women she designs for. Just as every bride is unique, so are the dresses she creates for them.
