Sophie et Voilà × Creators
Industry × Market
Company Level
From 2018 to 2024, Frost recognized influence where the bridal industry wasn’t yet looking, and connected it to Sophie et Voilà, from a Los Angeles bridal boutique to the runway of Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week.
Cross-Border Influence Strategy · Frost & Co.
The Question
Where does a bridal designer’s next influence come from, when it isn’t in the room yet?
What Frost Saw
Sophie et Voilà, a bridal designer from Bilbao, already had a distinct design language and a place on the Barcelona runway. Its collection that April, Cristóbal, paid homage to Cristóbal Balenciaga, a fellow Basque, with architectural silhouettes, and it had already reached the West Coast through a Los Angeles bridal boutique. Frost’s work began at a trunk show there.
From there, the influence around the designer was already present, but in different hands: a boutique founder’s eye for undiscovered designers, stylists who knew its gowns, and a creator, Kennedy Bingham, known as Gown Eyed Girl, whose gown try-on videos had found a new way to show bridal fashion: entertaining for the TikTok era, made for discovery, and carried by the algorithm to new audiences. Each held a piece. Frost saw them as one system, and carried it further.
The Direction
Connect the influence already around the designer, so it moved across borders toward Sophie et Voilà.
What Frost Created
A cross-border network of influence around one bridal designer: a content collaboration, three consecutive runway appearances, a takeover of the fashion week’s own channel, and stylists and creators brought into the room over six years.
The Calls
Six decisions recognized the influence around one bridal designer, and carried it across borders.
The Show
Three years on Sophie et Voilà’s runway.
Timeline
Seven years, from a boutique floor to a fashion week that made room for creators.
NOVEMBER 2018 · LOS ANGELES
At a trunk show, Ashley Powell meets Sophie et Voilà’s founders, and they discover a mutual friend from the Basque Country.
AUGUST 2019 · LOS ANGELES
By then an agent for actors and models at Q Management, Ashley books one of the agency’s models for an editorial by stylist Katie Balis for The Kismet Project. Katie styles the shoot in a Sophie et Voilà gown borrowed through the same boutique.
JULY 2020 · LOS ANGELES
Ashley introduces Katie to Sophie et Voilà directly, so Katie can pull gowns from the designer for her next editorial.
JUNE 2021 · LOS ANGELES
Ashley, who had just opened Frost and SEA, hears from a fellow stylist about Kennedy Bingham’s gown videos. Within weeks, Kennedy, known as Gown Eyed Girl, signs with Frost and SEA.
JULY 2021
Frost pitches Kennedy to Sophie et Voilà’s founders, who had already been following her work online.
FEBRUARY–MARCH 2022
Frost designs the first collaboration: Sophie et Voilà gowns, styled in a signature Gown Eyed Girl video, with Frost guiding the designer through its first creator content. Keen to bring Kennedy into the fashion week, the designer introduces Ashley to the Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week team.
MARCH 2022
Frost makes the case to the fashion week’s team for bringing an American bridal influencer to an event built for designers, buyers and press. Director Estermaria Laruccia extends an official invitation to Ashley and Kennedy as the fashion week’s guests, April 20–24. Ashley holds deep respect and gratitude for the vision she brought to the fashion week, and the relationship has outlasted her time as director.
APRIL 20, 2022 · BARCELONA
Kennedy wears a custom Sophie et Voilà gown to the fashion week’s Bridal Night with Viktor & Rolf.
APRIL 21, 2022 · BARCELONA
Kennedy makes her runway debut in Sophie et Voilà’s show and takes over Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week’s Instagram, hosting three shows.
2022 · JAPAN
After meeting Kennedy at the Pronovias show, Ayuka Matsumoto reports for ELLE mariage, naming the bridal influencer’s runway appearance one of Barcelona’s two headline topics, and featuring Sophie et Voilà’s gowns among the season’s trends in the same issue.
SUMMER 2022 · UNITED STATES
Two months after meeting her in Barcelona, Ayuka Matsumoto interviews Kennedy for Brides, as the expert on using TikTok as a personal wedding stylist.
APRIL–DECEMBER 2022 · NEW YORK AND LOS ANGELES
Between seasons, the relationship keeps working: a try-on with Sophie et Voilà during New York Bridal Fashion Week in April, and a new series of Gown Eyed Girl content in the designer’s gowns in December.
JULY 2022
Refinery29’s profile of Kennedy names Sophie et Voilà among the brands she partners with.
FEBRUARY 18, 2023 · LONDON
During London Fashion Week, SEA MGMNT brokers a content shoot for Gown Eyed Girl at Rosewood London. Both the introduction, through event planner Tara Fay, and photographer David Christopher come from Ashley’s talk at Engage! in Ireland. Sophie et Voilà loans a gown for the shoot.
APRIL 19, 2023 · BARCELONA
At the fashion week, held April 19–23, Kennedy returns to Sophie et Voilà’s runway. Frost also brings Alysia Cole, a plus-size bridal stylist and bridal influencer, giving size inclusivity a visible place in the front row of its Barcelona Bridal Night with Elie Saab.
APRIL 2023 · BARCELONA
In Barcelona, Ashley meets French bridal influencer Laetitia Raoux, who joins SEA MGMNT that June and later travels to European Bridal Week.
Read the XOXO, Essen case study →DECEMBER 2023 · LOS ANGELES
Kennedy wears Sophie et Voilà to the Oscars Gala.
FEBRUARY 2024
Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week confirms Gown Eyed Girl as the only American bridal influencer it has invited directly for its 2024 edition.
APRIL 17, 2024 · BARCELONA
At the designer’s invitation, Kennedy walks in Sophie et Voilà’s show for the third consecutive year, in its Jill mini dress. On April 20, the collection, Titanium, wins Best Bridal Collection at the fashion week’s Barcelona Bridal & Fashion Awards.
APRIL 2024 · BARCELONA
Frost brings Katie, an established Los Angeles stylist whose work spans editorial, commercial and private clients, including brides, to the fashion week as its guest, at shows including Giambattista Valli. She has no large online following; her influence rests on her expertise, not on her audience.
MAY 2024
SEA MGMNT’s representation of Kennedy concludes.
AUGUST 2024 · SANTA BARBARA
Kennedy wears Sophie et Voilà for her reception look at her own wedding celebration, as reported by The Cut. Among the guests are Ashley and ELLE mariage’s Ayuka Matsumoto, who first met Kennedy in Barcelona. From the runway to her own wedding: the designer she first walked for becomes part of her milestone.
2025 · BARCELONA
Brands hire Frost to bring creators into their official campaigns at the fashion week, from the runway to backstage and the front row.
See the work →Perspective
In 2022, they were called bridal influencers, and much of the bridal industry wasn’t ready for them. Designers, buyers and editors were wary of people whose authority came from an audience rather than an atelier, and most saw only content. Today they’re called creators, and the industry sees them very differently.
Here, the change didn’t come from an audience. A designer’s endorsement validated a bridal influencer to the global bridal community, and Ayuka Matsumoto carried it across borders, featuring both the bridal influencer and the designer in ELLE mariage, and interviewing Kennedy for Brides. The relationship outlasted any single deal, and became a channel other creators and brands used for years. In every life chapter, a few people are trusted inside the decision. For a bride choosing a gown, they were a boutique founder, a stylist, an editor and, by 2022, a bridal influencer. Frost connected the designer to them, across borders.
With gratitude to the boutique founder who first brought Sophie et Voilà to the West Coast, and to the Basque friend we shared with the designer. The world really is just a small town.
“The creator was one source of influence. The work was recognizing the rest.”
How Frost Created It
Where Frost Found It
At a trunk show, on a stylist’s editorial shoot, in a creator’s feed, at a designer’s front-row seat and in the inbox of a fashion week that hadn’t yet made room for creators.
What It Was Worth
To the designer, its gowns before a new American audience, and press in Japan and the U.S. To the fashion week, a new kind of participant whose Barcelona coverage reached 937,000 views in 2022 and 1.3 million in 2023. In return, Frost secured runways, front rows and hosted travel for the bridal influencers and stylists it brought. Each side judged the exchange worth repeating: the designer invited Kennedy back three years running, and by 2024 the fashion week was inviting her directly.
What It Connected To
A Los Angeles bridal boutique, the city’s stylists and creators, a Basque designer, a Barcelona runway, New York’s bridal market and a shoot in London.
What Moved
Influence moved in every direction: toward the designer, into the fashion week, and to the people Frost brought with it.
A fashion week that made room for creators. What began as one invitation became a regular place for bridal influencers at Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week. Frost was part of that shift from its early days.
A relationship that served more than one creator. The doors opened for one bridal influencer stayed open for others, from a plus-size stylist to an established stylist without a large online following. By 2025, brands were hiring Frost to do the same for their own campaigns. See the work →
3
Consecutive Runways
2
Countries of Press
7
Years, One Relationship
In the Press
ELLE mariage and Refinery29 pages reproduced with permission
Selected Coverage & Record
ELLE mariage (Japan) · No. 41, 2022
Collections Have Come Back (print)
Refinery29 · July 2022
My Thing: Meet The Anti-Wedding Creative Who Styles Bridal Wear For A Living ↗Brides · Summer 2022
How to Use TikTok as Your Personal Bridal Fashion Stylist (no longer online)
The Cut · October 2024
How a Gown Eyed Girl Got Married ↗