The beauty of a borrowed wedding dress

When Chaya Liberow got engaged in 2019, she found herself busy with a long list of wedding preparations. There were the invites, guest list and venues to consider, dinner choices to mull over, and whether to go with a DJ or just play music from Spotify. Every choice has a price tag.

Weddings are among life's most significant financial expenses, and so, Liberow, who lives in Melbourne, made a savvy decision to bypass one of its most expensive options. Instead of purchasing a wedding dress, she opted to borrow one from a Gemach.

Gemach is a Yiddish word, and it refers to a Jewish free loans society, an idea which has its origins in eastern Europe. There are many gemachs in Australia for different items – prams, strollers, wheelchairs and medical equipment, etc. But only one bridal Gemach. Instead of buying a gown, new brides borrow one for a small donation, which allows them to experience the joy of wearing a beautiful dress without the heavy financial burden.

“I didn’t think spending all that money for one night was worth it,” Liberow explains. Some Gemachs are intimate spaces; others are expansive showroom-like setups that house hundreds of bridal gowns. When she arrived at the bridal Gemach, in Melbourne, she was surprised to see how large it was.

With an inventory neatly organised by size, you could have mistaken it for a conventional wedding boutique - except that the Gemach is not a street front but stored in a big, unoccupied suburban house, filled with nothing but hundreds of gowns. “There were lots of options and many gowns. All different styles and different fashions.”

After spending some time looking through the dresses, and trying on a few gowns, Liberow found the one she wanted; a white mermaid gown adorned with delicate lace sleeves. “I felt really happy and really beautiful,” she tells The Jewish Independent.

A local dressmaker tailored it for her, and after the wedding, she had it dry-cleaned before returning the dress, at a total cost of only a few hundred dollars. By contrast, the average Australian bride spends roughly $2,000 on her dress, and they go well above $5,000 or $10,000 for those from name designers.

For the price, you get something to remember the most important day of your life, where you looked your most beautiful; but it’s hardly the most important part of the day, and on a cost-per-wear basis, it’s the worst part of your wardrobe.

When she reflected on her experience a few years after her wedding, Liberow had no regrets. “I totally understand that people want to have their special dress for their special night, but I’m so glad I borrowed mine. Dresses can be so much money. It’s so much time and so much stress. So I think being able to borrow gorgeous dresses is a really good option.”

Gemachs have been helping Jewish brides for hundreds of years. But in the 21^st century, amid growing concerns about the environmental and labour costs of a throwaway, disposable fast-fashion culture, their core concept seems radically contemporary. It’s an idea that’s taken hold in the greater world of fashion. Clothes rental services like Rent the Runway and FashionPass have become hot startups by allowing affluent women to rent the latest high fashion for a steep monthly price.

To start a bridal Gemach requires passion, focus and lots of hard work. It also requires a network of women, who after getting married want to donate their once-worn dresses so that other brides can enjoy them and use them.

When Zippy Oliver, who runs the Gemach in Melbourne, founded her bridal Gemach almost 30 years ago, she never anticipated that it would evolve into the largest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

“In 1994 my son passed away. I wanted to do something in his memory, and we had a little bit of money that we had for him, says Oliver. “I started a Gemach to help people when they made simchas [celebratory events], and to defray costs. Things like tables, chairs, and table centres,” she explains.

Two years after she founded her Gemach, Oliver’s mother passed away, and she was once again driven by a desire to spread kindness in the world to honour her mother’s memory. She decided to expand her Gemach to include bridal gowns. She collected a few donated gowns, and since then, it has continued to grow.

Today Oliver’s Gemach boasts a vast collection of donated bridal dresses, with Jewish brides from around Australia and New Zealand coming to choose from the carefully curated collection of gowns she has assembled.  

Although Gemachs are set up by members of, and for, the Orthodox Jewish community, Oliver says she also has plenty of less modest gowns donated by women who are not religious, and if a non-Jewish woman approached her for a gown, she would be happy to lend her one.

“[The Gemach] has everything for the bride,” says Oliver. “Headpieces, veils, gowns, jewellery, shoes and petticoats. We are talking about big numbers. There’s a couple of hundred wedding gowns. And gowns for the mother of the bride, dresses for the flower girls. There are outfits [that can be borrowed] for all the people in the bridal party.”

Oliver does not keep an official registry of how many brides she has helped find a dress over the years, but several times a week she fields calls from people who would like to inspect the collection of gowns she loans out.

“There are so many different shapes of bodies and so many different dreams,” she says. “It’s about helping someone to find something that they will feel good in.” Customers can choose from two six-foot racks of veils. “I have 12 feet of racks with just petticoats. This would have to be one of the largest petticoats collections in the Southern Hemisphere!”

Over time, Oliver’s Gemach has outgrown three different locations. But unlike fashion rental startups, Oliver does not run her Gemach for a profit. It’s a labour of love, helped by a small group of volunteer women to manage the clothes and field enquiries. She feels good about the important work she does and loves meeting brides. The store is open to any potential bride who finds out about her Gemach — Orthodox, non-Orthodox and non-Jewish — and it is discreet.

“It’s why I chose not to have a website which displays the gowns, so no one could match whose dress belonged to who. Nobody who donates a dress knows who wore it. It’s totally confidential,” she says.

Gemachs were initially conceived to assist financially challenged brides in achieving a beautiful look, but they are not exclusively used by those who are unable to afford a dress. Many brides choose to use a Gemach because it helps to foster a sense of community. 

Shoshana Hami, a resident of Monsey, a tightly knit ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York, availed the assistance of local Gemachs for her daughters' weddings. “I’ve used Gemachs for all my chassanehs,” she said, using the Yiddish word for wedding.

“I think it very much generates a feeling of unity, of love, and generosity. The kindness and sharing with each other, it’s almost like the people who are involved with the Gemachs are celebrating the simchas with you,” says Hami. “The kindness is almost contagious.”

“It’s a win-win situation,” Oliver says.  “People have invested a lot of money into a gown, a wedding gown that they will hopefully not wear again, so it’s a really wonderful thing that the person who created it and bought it, is able to feel that someone else can benefit from it. The person who [borrows] it is getting something special and the person who gives it, gets a lot of joy that what meant so much to them is being used.”

When I returned from interviewing Oliver, I started to think about own wedding dress, a beautiful off-white gown, with lace sleeves and intricately hand beaded bodice that had cost a small fortune. But since my wedding almost a decade ago, it had been meticulously preserved in my cupboard, unworn and taking up space.

I never had a plan for it. I never intended to donate it. But having toured the Gemach with Oliver, and spoken to women who used their services, that changed. I approached Oliver, who was delighted to accept my donation, and add my dress to the Gemach. As I drove to deliver the gown to the Gemach, I couldn't help but send a silent prayer and a heartfelt wish for boundless happiness to the bride who would soon embrace its magic.