Maggie Sottero Brand Guidelines: The Sydney-Born Bridal Label Built on a Corset

A Sydney designer, a family surname and a corset.

There is no designer called Maggie Sottero in the ordinary sense. The name was chosen. The company says Maggie Sottero Designs was founded in 1997 by Wayne and Lesley Webster alongside Lesley’s mother, Dorothy Steiner, and that the brand takes the name of Lesley’s great-grandmother, Margaret “Maggie” Sottero. Its 2025 company history says Lesley Margaret (“Maggie”) Webster took on the alias herself when she launched the core brand.

The story starts in Australia. The company says it began as a small boutique in Sydney, and the Salt Lake Tribune reported in August 2024 that the Sydney flagship store is where Webster got her start. The same report recalls what made her known: American boutique owners remembered 1997 as the year an Australian designer released a two-piece corset bridal outfit that made waves in the trade. Two of them, from Ohio, told the paper they had doubted anyone would wear something so risky on a wedding day. “Little did we know, everybody,” one said.

That corset became the brand’s foundation. A company release of August 2017 credited its “signature corset closure,” and the Tribune wrote in 2024 that corset bodices remain a signature feature and that each of the three lines includes adaptations of Webster’s design. The company’s history adds its own origin story, in which the idea came from seeing a corset in a lingerie store. Kelly Midgley, Webster’s daughter, told The Bridal Council in November 2020 that the corset, along with structure, boning and attention to detail, was what put the company on the map. Inside the business the shorthand for this is “Maggie Magic,” a phrase the company uses for its fit and construction.

The brand then moved. The Tribune reported that the family and the company relocated to Utah and that the headquarters is in West Valley City, on the Wasatch Front. The company gives its design studios as Sydney and Salt Lake City, and its 2017 release carries a Salt Lake City dateline. It is, in short, an Australian-born bridal brand run from Utah.

Three labels and two generations.

Maggie Sottero Designs has three labels. It calls the business family-owned and women-led, and its website carries the name Maggie Sottero Designs, LLC. The core label, Maggie Sottero, is the one it describes as romantic and timeless. Sottero and Midgley, launched in 2006, joins two family names and is the line the company calls couture. Rebecca Ingram is the line the Tribune called the more economical of the three.

The two later labels are tied to the second generation. Midgley told The Bridal Council that she first stepped into design more than 15 years earlier, taught by her mother and grandmother, and that Sottero and Midgley came from a market need for upscale couture gowns at an attainable price. The company’s About page says she established both labels. Dates for the third vary: the company’s timeline gives 2016 for Rebecca Ingram and says it honours Lesley’s grandmother, while a September 2021 feature on PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com gives 2006. A 2017 release already named all three labels.

Leadership has passed between the generations too. The 2017 release called Midgley lead designer. The 2021 feature said she had been promoted to CEO in the previous year, and the company’s 2025 history says she followed her mother into the role. The company names Edric Woo as lead designer, with more than 20 years’ experience, and credits his work with brand honours including the Desert Rose, DEBI, Dallas Rose and Diva awards. Those are industry prizes given as the company lists them. Its design team also includes Mark and Chris Russell and Patricia DeLaunay.

The range has widened with its programmes. The company says it introduced a Curve line in 2017 and showed its first plus-size model on the runway in 2018. In 2020 it introduced Personalize It!, which the 2021 feature describes as letting brides adjust details such as sleeves, skirt layers and train length. Midgley said in 2020 that gowns came in sizes 0–28, and the company’s history lists the same range. The Tribune said at least one dress in every line offers high necklines or full sleeves, designed with Utah brides in mind, while its vice president of sales and marketing stressed that the brand is global.

How bridal houses present themselves.

Bridal houses sell a single garment that most customers will wear once, and their images tend to reflect that. The dress usually comes first, shown whole on a stand or a model, with the room, the light and the type kept quiet around it. Pages often stay pale and uncluttered, so that white, ivory and blush can be told apart.

Close-ups do much of the remaining work. Lace, tulle, beading and hand finishing are hard to read at full length, so lookbooks and websites move in on a sleeve, a hem or a bodice seam. These details carry the claims about workmanship, and they give a designer’s pattern or a house’s lace a recognisable surface.

The runway calendar sets the rhythm. New York Bridal Fashion Week and Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week give houses a fixed moment to show a season, and many present a named collection with its own theme, set and printed material. The show then feeds the photography, film and social posts that follow it through the year. Backstage pictures, fittings and the walk down the runway all give a house more ways to show how a gown moves.

The shop is the other stage. Showroom mirrors, fitting platforms, soft seating and rails of samples are all part of how a label appears to a bride, and a garment bag or printed lookbook may be the piece of the brand that she takes home. For a designer, that makes the category a useful study in restraint: a small set of tones, a quiet typeface and careful photography, repeated from the catalogue to the fitting room.

Boutiques in more than 70 countries.

The business runs through independent boutiques. The company says it designs and manufactures gowns sold through independently owned shops, and its 2017 release counted authorised retailers in more than 70 countries, the figure the Tribune repeated in 2024. The company describes itself as a bridal gown manufacturer. The 2021 feature called the gowns handmade. The company also refers to a UK facility, and Companies House lists a private company named Maggie Sottero Designs Ltd in Merseyside, a clothing wholesaler incorporated in 1999 as The Bridal Company Limited and renamed in 2018.

The company usually releases new lines at a bridal expo, and Utah came late to its calendar. The Tribune reported that a show at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City on 17 July 2024, for spring 2025, was the first time the brand had shown on home turf, staged because the usual expo had been postponed. In 2017 the company had listed runways in Las Vegas, Chicago, New York and England.

Sustainability has become part of how the company presents itself. In February 2024 it announced a partnership with the textile recycling company SuperCircle to send excess inventory and materials for recycling, with a focus on fibre-to-fibre processing. SuperCircle’s chief executive, Chloe Songer, called it a first-of-its-kind programme for the bridal category. The company says all its excess stock is diverted from landfill into recycling and donation, and that it works with the Avena Group as well; the Tribune reported the same claim from DeLaunay, who leads the work. The company also says it has more than 200 active styles using fabrics such as waterless dyed satin and recycled-content lining as of spring 2027.

For a design guide, Maggie Sottero shows how much a brand can build on an adopted persona when the name carries real family history. A great-grandmother’s surname became the label, Midgley’s joined it on the second, and another family name became the third line. Compare Justin Alexander, a bridal group also built around one family’s names, and Essense of Australia, a bridal name that also points to Australia. For this guide we use a deep plum, ivory and a dusty rose with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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