Cathy's Art Diary

Beautiful exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the history of wedding dresses. What was lovely about this show was that often it was known who the dress was worn by and therefore exactly when it was worn. For the later years there was also a photograph of it being worn. All the dresses were given slightly romantic titles such as “An October Wedding”. The display case had line drawing of churches at the back and often this was of a church where one of the dresses had been worn. In the early cases I loved a dress worn by Mary Northcliffe   in York in 1807. I was a very Jane Austen empire line white muslin with asymmetric embroidery, also in white, to give it the feel of a toga. There was also an amazing dress form the late 1800’s with fringes of pearl down the front. One whole case was given over to Margaret Whigham’s dress from 1933, designed by Norman Hartnell and worn for a big society wedding. It was shown with a film of the event. Upstai...