The White Wedding Dress
Posted by P. Bingham on August 27, 1998 at 16:00:55:
In response to Wearing white..., written by The Mysterious H.C. on August 27, 1998 at 10:35:45
The Woman in fashion has a plate (all of them are worn by live famous women) of an 1814 white wedding dress and I found her text interesting as she maintains that the white wedding dress began to be popularly worn in about this time (though not exclusively worn) as opposed to not beginning until the Victorian period or even later:
This silk gauze dress, embroidered with floss and trimmed with applique satin, was worn by the bride of a young clergyman. It is a fairly early example of the white wedding dress, an innovation of the "classical" epoch. Though white is sometimes heard of for wedding dresses of the eighteenth century and earlier, it was more usual to wear a colored gown.
Did you interpret this text the same way I did?
I might as well include the rest of it!:
The veil, worn over a comb in the style of a mantilla, is an authentic regency specimen. Wedding trappings of every kind were destined to grow progressively larger through the century, as the vogue for a spectactular cerimony developed almost into a cult. The details of Mlle Vyroubova's costume, including the wreath of marguerites broken by a sprig of orange blossom, the loose gloves, and the small brise fan of lightly spangled horn, are imitated from a contemporary print.
The dress is moving slowly into a new cycle of fashion. The skirt no longer clings; it is "of an easy fullness", the bodice is a shade deeper than in the last picture; within a decade it will approach the natural waist line. The little moderately puffed sleeves will expand into melon sleeves.
Though these changes were the work of years, they seemed brilliantly rapid in their day, and one might suppose, reading such a paper as La Belle Assemblee, that new modes ousted the old ones every few weeks. This impression, not unusual in any age, is due to the impact of small novelties which, from the distance of time, are hardly noticed.
The high waist seemed so essential to beauty for approximately 30 years that is was adopted even in peasant dress, and it appears in all theatrical costumes of the period, however unsuitable to the character portrayed. The low waist - or no waist - was equally ubiquitous in the nineteen-twenties, but its vogue was much briefer.
Patricia
Oh, and Henry, that was a very interesting insight on the white servant dresses. I forgot about that. It must have been quite a chore for "highbred" ladies to distinguish themselves from the lower stratasphere. And the money that constantly changed hands to achieve the latest look.
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