Made-for-Hollywood Fairy Tale

The wedding gown of famous brides—especially ones about to become a princess—often becomes the centerpiece of the fairy tale remembrance, even more than the wedding ceremony or the couple themselves. It's a memory and an image that we keep returning to...well past any whiff of a once "fairy-tale" romance!

Recently, Vanity Fair magazine returned to the iconic gown of Grace Kelly in Fawnia Soo Hoo's article, "Why Grace Kelly's Wedding Dress Embodies a Made-for-Hollywood Fairy Tale."

With sublimely intricate details, like seed pearls accenting needle lace motifs and a pleated silk faille cummerbund atop the skirting, Grace Kelly’s wedding-dress style continues to be interpreted—even by royals and celebrities—over six decades later. “The reason Princess Grace’s wedding gown still resonates today with so many brides has at least as much to do with who wore it, as the dress itself. The design is lovely and timeless, but the way the dress sits at an intersection of Hollywood and royalty makes it particularly evocative and very much an aspirational fantasy piece for many brides,” says Lorenzo Marquez, author, podcaster, and cofounder of fashion and culture website, Tom + Lorenzo.

 “Kate Middleton was particularly smart to evoke the dress without copying it, underlining her own status as a commoner marrying a prince, but also avoiding any comparisons to previous brides in the British royal family,” Marquez added. 

A lovely book by my costume-history colleague, Kristina Haugland of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Grace Kelly: Icon of Style to Royal Bride, shares the story behind the creation and sentiment of the gown and its accessories...which were all given to the museum by the new princess soon after her wedding. The gown was last on display in 2006.

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{Family & National Treasures}

Dear Bride-to-Be:
Historically, wedding gowns had a special place in a family’s remembrances, and those bridal costumes designed to be worn only once were “often carefully preserved as a family heirloom, sometimes passed down from generation to generation” along with anecdotal stories and tenderly held mementoes.

But royal wedding dresses—and many connected to royalty—and their precious accessories are donated to a museum or historical collection for safekeeping with an occasional display to the public. Even months before her glittering wedding in the spring of 1956, Grace Kelly announced that she would give her antique lace and silk gown to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in her hometown. And within the year, she and her prince visited the exhibition in a flurry of press coverage.

Concerned her pale blue wedding ensemble by couturier Mainbocher would not be accepted by a British museum after scandalously marrying a former king in 1937, Wallis Warfield Simpson donated it to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. And there it resides to this day.

The Duchess of Cambridge’s regal couture gown went on temporary display at Buckingham Palace soon after her wedding in the spring of 2011. Following a private visit by Kate and her grandmother-in-law (the Queen!) over a half million people visited the exhibit of the dress that “reflected the vision of a new generation of the British monarchy.”

In 1997 I saw a special exhibition, “In Royal Fashion,” at the Museum of London featuring the wedding gowns of Princess Charlotte of Wales (an elaborate “cloth-of-silver” circa 1816) and Queen Victoria (sans the fragile Honiton lace frills and border.)  They are only two of several royal wedding dresses now in the care of the skilled conservation and heritage charity housed at Kensington Palace that take care of these national treasures.

Princess Diana’s shimmering pouf of a wedding gown went on display in 1998, with other bridal accoutrements, in a gallery at Althorp, the Spencer family ancestral home. The exhibition has also been on a grand tour of the world for over a decade (ending this summer) with millions peering in at the enchantment of it all!

Whatever you are wearing for your wedding or whatever you decide to do with your gown afterwards, wear it like the goddess you are…allow yourself to feel your true beauty inside and out, enjoying your own “royal” time in the spotlight.

 

Love. Listen. Let go.

...with love from Cornelia

 

ps: This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: {Volume One} For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding. Stay tuned for publication announcements later in the year!

 

{The Language of Flowers}

Dear Bride-to-Be:
Brides and the language of flowers have a romantic and mystical history. Through the ages, romantics assigned meanings to flowers and herbs according to their innate nature—and a language was created!

Bridal folklore tells of maidens entwining creamy white, aromatic orange blossoms into a bridal wreath for their hair, to ensure fertility; or carrying a bunch of sweet smelling white lilacs, representing innocence; or tucking fragrant herbs into their bouquets, rosemary for remembrance and dill, believed to provoke lust. (And both herbs were often eaten for their supposed powers!)

Queen Victoria carried a nosegay of snowdrops, representing friendship (they were her beloved Albert’s favorite flower); and Princess Grace, after much thought, selected lilies-of-the-valley for her wedding bouquet, one of the many delicate flowers meaning purity.

Former Brides magazine editor-in-chief, Barbara Tober, tells us that the sentimental Victorians of the 19th century had a custom of arranging a bouquet of flowers and herbs “to spell out the groom’s name (baby’s breath, irises, limonium, and lilies for B-I-L-L.)’’ The little book, Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers, is a reproduction of a Victorian’s floral inspiration that will help you create your own romantic language in flowers!

However, don’t wait for your wedding day. Be inspired, with or without flowers, to speak a language of love and tenderness right this very moment!

Love. Listen. Let go.
...with love from Cornelia

[Bridal photograph: Matt Hakola]

{The Return of Lace}

Dear Bride-to-Be:

Whether you are wearing a lace gown or just have a bit of lace-trimmed lingerie for your wedding day, lace has a special legacy for brides. So I thought you would enjoy this article I wrote, recently published in the winter issue of Season magazine.
....with love from Cornelia

The Return of Lace

Its early Venetian name, Punta in Aria—“stitches in air”—said it all: ethereal and mysterious. Lace has charmed and bewitched both men and women for centuries, worn as high-status fashion accessories at a time when you were what you wore! When lace became de rigueur for aristocratic brides, it was worn for its prestige (only the rich could afford it) as much as for its beauty (lace always captivated!)

There are stories from centuries past of brides who wore yards and yards of precious handmade needle and bobbin laces—worth a king’s ransom—but modern wedding history starts with Queen Victoria. Big white wedding gowns have been around since she broke with the silvery custom and chose “plain white” for her wedding in 1840. To make a statement—after all she was already queen of an empire—she called on England’s beloved yet faltering lace industry to create deep borders of handmade Honiton lace to trim her dress and silk tulle veil. Of course her wedding was highly publicized so the lace legacy was re-ignited and became associated with brides through the 1950s, highlighted by Grace Kelly’s silk taffeta gown with a fitted antique Brussels lace bodice and high collar. (What 50s-era bride didn’t want to look like a princess?)

Even when lace was out of fashion, it was typical for American women making a voyage “to the continent” to bring back a rose point lace veil from Belgium or Valenciennes lace yardage from France with dreams of a wedding in mind. Through the social upheavals of the 1960s and 70s, lace as well as traditional wedding ceremonies took a back seat until Princess Diana’s royal nuptials turned weddings back into stylish events and romantic, lace-trimmed gowns became the favorite of 1980s brides. (The lace appliquéd on Diana’s corseted bodice once belonged to Queen Mary, Prince Charles’ great-grandmother.)

In the 1980s and 90s, my bridal art-to-wear shop in Atlanta followed this practice of incorporating vintage laces into new gowns—“elegant recycling” as one of my designers called it. When creating Lady Mary’s wedding dress, Downton Abbey’s costume designer used this technique by repurposing an antique lace veil she found; it became the centerpiece in a delicate crystal-trimmed, tabard-style silk chiffon confection inspired by royal brides of the early 1920s.

Of course the most memorable lace revival was Kate Middleton! Her sweeping designer wedding gown with its sheer long sleeves and lace trimmed bodice and skirt—laces handmade by artisans at the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace—set the fashion runways abuzz. Other royal brides followed suit with sumptuous dresses of the finest machine-made laces: Sweden’s Princess Madeleine married this year wearing a Valentino pleated silk organza gown with an open lace bodice; Princess Stephanie and Princess Claire of Luxembourg royalty both recently wore dreamy Elie Saab couture gowns with crystal- and pearl-encrusted Chantilly lace like something out of the most shimmering fairytale … and something only lace’s mystical filigree nature could inspire. □

[This is a reprint of my article, "The Return of Lace," featured in the winter 2013-2014 issue of Season magazine. To read it in the magazine's layout online, scroll to page 46.]