Wedding gown design and styles

Wedding Gowns: The History Of the White, Western Wedding Gown

Despite the seeming ubiquity of white wedding gowns, the association of a beautiful, white dress with a bride's marriage day is relatively recent and specific to Western culture. Most women up to the 19th century simply wore their best dress, which was unlikely to be white. "Grey was much favoured as both modest and useful, and brown was not uncommon; white was usually just too impractical" (The history of the white wedding dress, 2013, Reader's Digest). White came into fashion amongst the aspiring middle class when Queen Victoria wore white to her wedding. White had been often worn by royalty in the past but was not particularly fashionable at the time. "Victoria's attire was considered far too restrained by royal standards, with no jewels, crown, or velvet robes trimmed with ermine. White was also considered the color of mourning at the time, so it was an inappropriate hue for a wedding. But Victoria did not care" (Flock 2011).

The reason that white had fallen out of favor amongst the elite during the early Victorian era was very simple: money. Textiles were often used to display wealth: "the more elaborate the weave of the fabric, and the richer the fibres uses, and the rarer the colour, the better the demonstration of wealth. Before the invention of effective bleaching techniques, white was a valued colour: it was both difficult to achieve, and hard to maintain. Wealthy brides, then, often wore white to demonstrate their money, not their purity" (Oakes 2011). However, this was not the case in Victoria's day. Fashionable women in the era immediately preceding Victoria's had taken to wearing expensive dyes in bright colors and elaborate jewels and brocade as a demonstration of their wealth. Many even wore gowns woven with fibers of gold and silver. But after Victoria, "it was as if no one had ever worn any other color" but white (Flock 2011).

Victoria's simple gown was precedent-setting and defined appropriate attire ever afterward. "Less than a decade after Victoria married…the Godey's Lady's Book wrote: 'Custom has decided, from the earliest ages, that white is the most fitting hue, whatever may be the material. It is an emblem of the purity and innocence of girlhood, and the unsullied heart she now yields to the chosen one'" (Flock 2011). While before white had symbolized wealth, now it was reinterpreted in a more decorous fashion to symbolize purity. This new Godey's Lady's Book interpretation deemphasized the social and financial component attached to marriage and emphasized the romantic component.

Victoria's white gown also symbolized patriotism. Victoria had chosen to trim her gown with lace to support the British lace-making industry, which was being threatened by mass production of textiles. Lace became more fashionable on all wedding gowns as a result. Increasing wealth and the rise of the modern bourgeois caused middle-class women to aspire to at least look like a princess on their wedding days. White was not only the color of the Queen: it was also a demonstration that a family could buy an impractical, expensive gown that could not be re-worn. (Although some women did simply dye their wedding dresses a darker color after the fact).