Fifty Dresses that Changed the World: Design Museum Fifty by Design Museum

Author:Design Museum [Museum, Design]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Design, Art &#38
ISBN: 9781840915877
Publisher: Octopus
Published: 2009-10-04T21:00:00+00:00

Zandra Rhodes’s painted chiffon dresses perfectly illustrates her accomplished flair for textile design and sensitive use of colour.

PRINCESS OF WALES’S WEDDING DRESS

1981

David and Elizabeth Emanuel

Why is it that when you ask which dress changed the world, the answer all too often is the Princess of Wales’s wedding gown?

Around the world, expectation mounted as the royal carriage approached St Paul’s Cathedral. The first we saw of the future princess was a glimpse of her face amid a cloud of white, framed by the gilt surround of the carriage window. Then, as she stepped out onto the red carpet, the dress inflated into its full billowing volume and its seemingly endless train unfolded, with the aid of its creators, David (1952–) and Elizabeth (1953–) Emanuel. The creases, we were later reassured, were intentional.

The aspirations of brides-to-be would never be the same again. This was the archetypal fairytale princess dress. It brought big skirts and ruffles to the fashion fore, and re-established the wedding gown as fashion statement. With its hundreds of metres of petticoat netting, ivory silk and taffeta, its mass of ribbons and bows and antique lace, its puffed sleeves and frilly collar, and thousands of sequins and pearls, this dress was an expression of opulence and excess that foreshadowed something of the upwardly mobile tone of the decade to come.

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