A Wedding Classic Revisited

from GETTY IMAGES

“On May 19, 2018, the royal nuptials of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made history and broke traditions, with the bride Meghan Markle’s wedding dress almost serving as an allegory,” Fawnia Soo Hoo wrote in her recent article, “Meghan Markle’s Wedding Dress Nods to Hollywood and American Royalty,” for Vanity Fair.

I love that this “allegorical” wedding, this extraordinary couple, and Meghan’s sensitive and intuitive creativity is being revisited in such a beautiful article. Fawnia chats with the gown’s designer, Clare Waight Keller, about its inspiration and her collaboration with the bride, noting other memorable wedding gowns....

“There was that sense of playfulness and modernity and doing things in a different way,” Waight Keller says. “And I really feel that—for the dress, particularly—that sense of it could be something that really represented her, her spirit, her modernity, and the freshness....”

Click on the article here...

from GETTY IMAGES

Also revisit the article I wrote a few days after that memorable wedding in 2018 and posted here: “A Day of Gracious Gestures and Love Power”....

The radiant bride, in designer-sculpted shimmering white silk....

from GETTY IMAGES

In addition, I’ve written about Harry and Meghan’s spiritual union in a section of a book I've been working on for many years, using this lovely quote from a friend of the bride: 

Meghan’s friend Vicky Tsai, after attending the wedding ceremony, confirmed: “It felt like a moment where the world paused and celebrated love.”

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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25 Years Later...

Photograph by Denis Reggie

                               

25 YEARS LATER, 

CAROLYN-BESSETTE KENNEDY'S

 WEDDING DRESS STILL STUNS  

 

"How many dresses can we say get better and better?"

Rachel Burchfield Vanity Fair 

                     September 21, 2021                           

{Below is a reprint of Rachel Burchfield's anniversary article in Vanity Fair, remembering this lovely, intimate wedding 25 years later and the bride's extraordinary fashion-forward statement...all captured in Denis Reggie's remarkable photograph, above. At the time, the designers for my bridal art-to-wear shop in Atlanta--who had been designing many "princess gowns" since Diana Spencer's wedding in 1981--had begun to create simple, 1930s-inspired gowns for modern-savvy brides. So we were delighted to see Carolyn's wedding dress leading this trend with such feminine style and glamour!}

{Fashion Diplomacy}

 

Fashion Diplomacy Returns at Joe Biden's and Kamala Harris' Inauguration

Katey Rich wrote for Vanity Fair: "The scaled down, heavily protected event still brought together most of Washington's leaders, many of whom dressed symbolically for the occasion." (Click above to read the article and see fashion photos and commentary!)

{Eco-Friendly Weddings More Important Than Ever}

Attention on planning a “green wedding”—an eco-friendly wedding where the couple tries to decrease the impact of their event on the planet—has been part of wedding planning consciousness for years now. But the stakes have never higher to raise our awareness even more, putting this concern at the front of wedding planning! 

The Knot, the popular wedding magazine and website, has had many articles through the years encouraging brides and grooms to tread lightly; like Tia Albright’s “Your Eco-Friendly Wedding Guide.” And there was a run of guide books a decade or so ago that are still informative: Emily Elizabeth Anderson’s Eco-Chic Weddings from 2007; Wenona Napolitano‘s The Everything Green Wedding Book and Kate Harrison’s The Green Bride Guide, both from 2008; and Mireya Navarro’s Green Wedding: Planning Your Eco-Friendly Celebration from 2009.

Current articles to read: Kenzie Bryant wrote for Vanity Fair, “Are Carbon Offsets the Wedding Registry Gift of the Future?”; from Green Wedding Shoes, a “Sustainable Gift Guide” looking to the holidays; and another way to be more “sustainable” is to wear a dress that is truly re-wearable like a “cool, nonchalant and real” one from designer Karen Walker, as shown in Vogue; and “The Ultimate Guide to Ethical Wedding Dresses” is full of creative ideas!

However, with the current climate crisis, it becomes the responsibility of all of us—whether it’s everyday life or special occasions—to raise our consciousness, educate ourselves, and be aware of what we can do to do no damage!