Known for her elegant wedding gowns that have witnessed the beauty of Holy Matrimony, Fil-Chi fashion designer Rosenthal Tee is confidently making her way up the ranks in both the local and global fashion scene. With her career booming over the course of just a few years, her ‘strongly feminine’ designs have already graced the runways of New York Fashion Week and have seen the limelight through iconic celebrities. Specializing in bridal wear, Rosenthal continues to make her clients the most beautiful they can ever be on their wedding day.
With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting several businesses including the fashion industry, Rosenthal shares how she was able to adapt to the new normal to keep her label up and running.
Being driven by events, Rosenthal’s label has taken a backseat as the pandemic continues to disrupt our lives. “As a luxury non-essential industry, we’ve definitely felt the impact of this pandemic from having one to two events to dress for each week, to having nothing at all come in,” she shares. After crowdsourcing from her old clients, friends, and other connections, her studio was able to successfully shift to making PPEs in order to adapt to the new normal, at the same time, ensuring the security of her staff as it would help in allocating funds to help them.
At the moment, her business survives on the bare minimums, but she remains hopeful that once everything normalizes, they can slowly ease back and have those events and celebrations again. For the meantime, she has implemented new systems and protocols for the safety of her staff and clients with the many limitations involved due to the pandemic.”Our studio is fitted with the safety protocols such as face shields and masks for myself and my assistants, while client is also in their face masks during appointments for consults and fittings. We regularly disinfect the most frequently touched objects in our studio just to make sure that everything is still safe for use. ” Rosenthal shares.
Aside from these health and safety measures, Rosenthal’s design house also shifted to online consultations with their clients to limit face-to-face interactions. From choosing the right fabric to drafting the designs, she does all of this over Zoom, FaceTime or other messaging apps. While there are some limitations when it comes to discussing these things remotely with them, she shares how lucky she is that the majority of her clients trust her design prowess, making the process much easier for the both of them.
In terms of fittings, there really is no way around it but to do it personally. As a way to limit the interaction of her staff and clients, Rosenthal tries to complete the fittings personally without having them have to be in close proximity until needed. “Knowing how to do a proper fitting is very much something that has been ingrained in my training as a designer,” she says. She also mentions that they will definitely stick to a consult-by-appointment basis only which will help both the designer and client prepare the necessary things well. “This can include on my end, color and fabric swatches and other materials, and on the client-end, a theme or mood board of their wedding or special occasion to give the designer a better understanding of what would work well for the event and situation,” she continues.
With everything that has been happening, Rosenthal is still thankful that despite these hurdles, she is still able to work, design, and create majestic gowns for her clients. Although things have toned down a bit for her in terms of dressing brides for their weddings, along with her team, they are still doing their very best to cater to them. At the end of the day, no pandemic can stop Rosenthal from making these beautiful pieces with quality, passion, and heart.
Check out more of Rosenthal Tee’s designs here: https://www.instagram.com/rosenthaltee/
