A morsel of fashion history is what I have to offer you today. I don’t want to cause any overdoses.
While ending an elliptical marathon at the gym two weeks ago, I flipped through Town And Country Weddings to make the time go by faster. Yes, I read wedding magazines. I read all magazines – architecture, gay and lesbian, travel, fashion, etc. But that’s not the point. Stop asking questions, okay?
So, in my last five minutes, I came across this paragraph,
“For decades, fashion designers have been enamored of the wedding dress. Beginning in the 1920s, couture houses such as Lanvin, Vionnet, and Mainbocher showed bridal gowns as a service to society women who were looking for complete wardrobes to accommodate every facet of their lives. By the ’40s and ’50s the practice had become increasingly popular, thanks in part to Jacques Fath, a Hollywood favorite who designed Rita Hayworth’s gown for her wedding to Prince Aly Khan, in 1949.”
The short article continued on to discuss how it was custom for designers to end their collections with a bridal look because, as stated in the paragraph above, it would create a “complete” wardrobe for a woman. That had my head, and not my feet, spinning. The fact didn’t alarm or upset me – it made me think. What kind of impression was that giving – that a wedding and a husband is what entailed “completed” look and in turn, a “completed” life? Who was influencing who? Were the designers pushing marriage on women or were the women pushing the designers to create wedding looks? Was this really a sign of the times? Lastly, oh my how times have changed, for better or for worse.
