Melbourne bridal house Raffaele Ciuca is preparing to add more international brands to its bridalwear portfolio in a bid to keep up the pace after 70 years in business.
The family-owned operation, which runs boutiques in Brunswick and Armadale, held a luxury bridal showcase at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum on October 23 during Melbourne Fashion Week to mark the occasion. Managing director Patricia Pallozzi chose the venue to reflect the business’s Italian heritage, having returned from New York days before.
“It is a cost,” Pallozzi said of the show. “But we’re celebrating 70 years, seven decades of being in business.”
Rather than tying the spend to sales, Pallozzi framed the return as a thank you to the business’s 40 staff and the Melbourne customers who have kept it trading across generations, including mothers who now bring their daughters. One staff member, Teresa, has been with the business for 25 years.
The business was founded in 1956 by Raffaele Ciuca, a tailor from Paganica in Italy’s L’Aquila province, and his father Francesco, in a former grocery shop in North Fitzroy. It moved from suit hire into bridesmaid, debutante and bridal wear through the 1970s and 1980s, opened its Brunswick flagship on Sydney Road in 1986 and added Armadale in 2006.
In the 2010s the family began stocking international labels including Berta and Vera Wang Bride, with gowns priced between $10,000 and $20,000. It closed its menswear offer in 2015 to focus on bridal, launched its first in-house bridal collection, Renaissance, in 2025, and has since added Steven Khalil, Nicole + Felicia and Vivienne Westwood bridal.
Pallozzi said the Vivienne Westwood partnership started with a cold email outlining the business’s history. The English designer label then asked which other brands Raffaele Ciuca carried, and its existing Vera Wang account helped close the deal.
“Just send them an email,” Pallozzi said. “Global brands, when they see us, they see a 70-year family business.”
The recent New York trip included a tour of Vivienne Westwood’s emporium, which Pallozzi described as a pinch-me moment. She said Melbourne brides had been asking where they could buy the label locally.
The business now has five further international brands under consideration from the New York trip. Pallozzi said the team would review the collections with its buyers to identify gaps in its range, flagging colour as a trend she noted on the runways.
With its two stores, Pallozzi indicated there are no plans to open interstate as yet, and instead pointed to demand from interstate customers who travel to its stores in Melbourne.
“We get so many brides flying in from interstate, coming because we’ve got so many global international brands in Melbourne,” she said. “It’s a destination.”
Seventy years on, Pallozzi said that while the stores have changed in appearance over the years, half of its bookings still come through the phone.
"What hasn't changed is the reason people walk through the door,” she said. “Someone is getting married, and it's our job to honour that. Dad did it with a tape measure. We're still doing it."