Wedding Dress V & A Searc

Within the textiles and fashion collection of the Victoria and Albert museum, you can find this unique piece of a red wedding dress. Made in Britain by an unknown designer during early 1938, Miss Helen Monica Maurice wore the dress for her marriage to Dr Arthur Newton Jackson on the following year. A very intriguing piece of garment it is due to its bold colours and contemporary design, not typically found in a traditional white wedding dress.

The materials used for the dress were silk gauze over artificial silk and Petersham. The ruby red silk gauze dress buttons in the front with a shirtwaist bodice, also featuring a mid-length hem with short-puffed sleeves. The blue glass buttons go well with the deep blue Petersham belt, simultaneously intensifying the contrast to the red. Although the only remaining evidence of her veil was a black and white photograph, it is likely that blue or red was the colour ("Wedding Dress | V&A

Although Vogue during the 1920s and 1930s featured subtly coloured wedding gowns, red was still an unconventional colour. With these constrained ideas, most brides believed that a traditional Western white-wedding was the right and proper way to go. It would usually be deemed as bizarre if the wedding dress was in any colour except for the traditional white or, especially with red being the most daring and out there (Ehrman 126).

On the other hand, wedding dresses in history, particularly 176 years ago were more commonly coloured, especially red for the royalty. However, when Queen Victoria got married to Prince Albert at St James’s Palace in London during 1840, the turning point for coloured wedding dresses was when she decided to wed in white from head to toe. Almost immediately, the wealthy and fashionable brides caught on to the concept of wearing white for their