Livre - The wedding dress

Few garments are choosen with as much care as wedding dresses. The wedding dress is an expression of the bride-to-be's identity and some women invest their dress with almost magical qualities, seeing the right choice as a talisman of their future happiness. It is a symbol of love and commitment and of the beginning of a new phase of in woman's life. Wedding dresses also reflect the societies and cultures that created and preserved them and this sumptuous book on surviving wedding garments in the V&A's collection, photographs, letters, memoirs, newspaper accounts and genealogical research to explore the history of the wedding dress and traditions that have developed around it from 1700 to the present day. It focuses on the white wedding dress, which became fashionable in the early nineteenth century and is worn today by women across the world. The book considers the way designers have challenged and refreshed the traditional white wedding dress, and the influence of the wedding industry whose antecedents lie in the commercialization of the wedding in Victorian Britain. The wedding dress is not only about fashion, but also about the cultivation of the image of the bride. This book is a tribute to a gown steeped in tradition, the romance of its evolution and the splendour of its design.