Pale grey slashed chiffon wedding dress designed by Gareth Pugh and veil by Stephen Jones, 2011 Worn by Katie Shillingford for her marriage to Alex Dromgoole, 2011. Courtesy of Katie Shillingford. Photo © Amy Gwatkin
The Victoria & Albert's Museum's spring 2014 exhibition traces the development of the fashionable white wedding dress and its interpretation by leading couturiers and designers, offering a panorama of fashion over the last two centuries.
The opening section of the exhibition features some of the earliest examples of wedding fashion including a silk satin court dress (1775) and a 'polonaise' style brocade gown with straw bergère hat (1780) lent by the Chertsey Museum. The preference for white in the 19th century is demonstrated by a white muslin wedding dress decorated with flowers, leaves and berries (1807) recently acquired by the V&A, and a wedding outfit embellished with pearl beads design by Charles Frederick Worth (1880).
As the 19th century drew to a close historical costume influenced fashion. A fine example is be a copy of a Paris model designed by Paquin Lalanne et Cie made by Stern Brothers of New York (1890) for an American bride.
Designs from the 1920s and 1930s will illustrate the glamour of bridal wear which was now influenced by evening fashions, dresses were slim-hipped and made from richly beaded textured fabrics and slinky bias-cut satin. During the Second World War when clothing restrictions were introduced, brides needed to make imaginative and practical fashion choices. They used non-rationed fabrics such as upholstery materials, net curtaining and parachute silk, or married in a smart day dress or service uniform. On display will be a buttercup patterned dress made in light-weight upholstery fabric by London dressmaker Ella Dolling (1941)
Wedding Dresses 1775-2014 also explores the growth of the wedding industry and the effect of increasing media focus on wedding fashions. Improvements in photography in the early 20th century encouraged photojournalism and society weddings were reported in detail in the national press and gossip columns. Two of the most spectacular wedding dresses on show will be the Norman Hartnell dress made for Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll) for her marriage to Charles Sweeny (1933), and the Charles James ivory silk satin dress worn by Barbara 'Baba' Beaton for her marriage to Alec Hambro (1934).
Other pages of images and collections relating to marriages at the V&A's website:
Silk satin wedding dress, designed by Norman Hartnell, 1933, given and worn by Margaret, Duchess of Argyll. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Don't forget to view the V&A's Wedding shop for items related to the exhibition,
Other images in the V&A's fashion gallery: Stays and Busk
- Date: 1660-1680 (made)
- Place: Netherlands
- Artist/maker: Unknown
Object Type
Stays (a stiff corset) were essential garments in the fashionable woman's wardrobe throughout the 17th century. Some sort of stiffening of a woman's gown had been part of dress construction since the early 16th century. Sometimes it was added to the outer bodice; sometimes it was in the form of separate stays worn under the gown. Originally the stiffening served the purpose of preventing the expensive and elaborately decorated fabric of the gown from wrinkling. However, because stays could mould the female torso, they became essential for producing whatever shape was considered fashionable.
Materials & Making
The stays are made by hand-stitching the watered silk to a layer of linen in long narrow pockets. Thin strips of whalebone are inserted into the pockets to give the stays their shape. Whalebone is in fact not bone, but cartilage from the mouth of the baleen whale. It grows in large sheets in the mouth of the whale and serves as a kind of sieve to filter out tiny krill, the whale's primary source of food, from the seawater. Commercial whaling began in the early 17th century in the North Sea and quickly spread to the waters around Greenland and eventually to the Bering Seas as the whales were hunted almost to extinction. Baleen was used for women's stays and hoops as well as a wide variety of other items such as riding crops, whips, brushes, chair backs and bottoms, carriage springs and fishing rods. Whale blubber was rendered into oil and used for lighting. Whalebone was the preferred stiffener for stays because it was firm enough to hold the shape, yet flexible enough not to break when the wearer moved. The ribbons retain their original points, the narrow metal clamps at the ends. They prevent the ribbon from unravelling and help to thread it through the lacing holes. The points are made of tinned iron; normally they would have rusted away.
Above text ©Victoria and Albert Museum
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