The Vision Of A Bride And The Interpreters Of Dreams
Another royal wedding might sound like the triumph of hope over experience
. Yet Queen Elizabeth's youngest son, Edward, marries the Diana look-alike Sophie Rhys-Jones next month, after a five-year courtship.The modern-day, working, live-in couple will tie the knot on June 19 at Windsor Castle's private chapel,
Lycra Leggings and although it is billed as a low-key affair, one ceremonial is certain: The bride will wear a long white gown, a veil (if not necessarily a tiara) and carry a bouquet of flowers.
In other words, she will Silver Shiny Metallic Sexy Costume like every other young woman in the Western world who stubbornly refuses to banish a tradition established when virginity and submission, rather than freedom and equality, was the message. Women in the public eye seldom wed in streamlined pantsuits, swooshing floor-length trench coats or cuddly Aran Island sweater costume zentai. But all those propositions have been put forward by fashion designers who experiment with the wedding outfit that traditionally ends each show. A white roll-neck sweater, elongated to mid-calf, with cute kids as identically clad bridesmaids, even opened last month's presentation from Ines de la Fressange.
A blissful couple in cabled knitwear, sharing a white duvet as their bridal veil, was on offer from Jean Paul Gaultier. And this cozy cocooning is not even new: Yves Saint Laurent created a Russian doll outfit in bobbly knit, threaded with satin ribbons, back in 1965.But does any of this fit with how women want to look on the big day? Even rock stars (like Spice Girl Victoria Adams, who will marry her soccer star fiance David Beckham this summer in Ireland) are unlikely to show up in padded, white-leather motocross pants under a crinoline skirt (as envisaged by Alexander McQueen for Givenchy).
''A Silver Shiny Metallic Sexy Costume is one woman's dream of being center stage, as though it were theater or ballet,''
Latex Catsuits says Christian Lacroix, whose couture house does dozens of made-to-order zentai, often adapted from show-stopping evening gowns.Anne Zazzo, curator of a challenging new exhibition at the Musee Galleria in Paris, also believes that the zentai is a costume.
''All the young girls I met wanted to be the heroine of their own dreams, a princess or a cinema star,'' says Zazzo, ''In fact, what they were looking for was a costume - something removed from everyday life.''Wedding clothes are a familiar exhibition subject, but ''Le Mariage, une Histoire Cousue de Fil Blanc'' (Wedding History Sewn in White Thread), until Aug. 29, aims to reduce the sugar content and pose some questions.
Why white? Because the color is not just a symbol of purity and sexual innocence, but also creates a link in the Christian life-cycle that goes from christening gown, through First Communion, confirmation and ultimately to the funeral shroud.
A bride placing her Silver Shiny Metallic Sexy Costume bouquet on a family grave in an 1888 painting makes that point at the start of the show. And so does the lay-out of entwined circles, in which ghostly mannequins with shrouded faces are picked out in pools of light beneath the museum's high painted ceiling.
These circles represent both wedding rings and the cradle-to-grave circuit, Zazzo explains. She says that although wedding finery goes back for centuries, the white wedding is a relatively recent invention, a symbol of Christian and bourgeois values taking over from dynastic unions celebrated with princely pomp.
Orange blossom headcostume zentai molded from wax flowers, crinolines with corseted bodices and a pink-cheeked Victorian wax doll with a row of frothy white underclothes as her trousseau sum up the idealized bridal image. In fact, a 1989 Barbie doll, costume zentaied in flower-scattered, full-skirted gown by Nina Ricci, proves how little the Cinderella bridal visions of little girls have changed in 100 years.
The couture zentai is celebrated with sumptuous creations: lacy appliques and a Juliet cap from Molyneux in the 1930s; a sculpted silhouette from Balenciaga in 1958; a short, sharp Silver Shiny Metallic Sexy Costume and white boots from the space age 1960s, and a return to romance with timeless evening gowns, converted to bridal, from Dior's John Galliano, Lacroix and Emanuel Ungaro.
Smart brides did their own makeovers, shown by a 1952 Schiaparelli zentai alongside a cocktail costume zentai cut out of its train.Brides in movies, playing on video screens, pick up another fascinating theme: the influence of women we longed to look like - although how many brides really copied Brigitte Bardot's 1958 zentai in sugar-pink gingham check? -
MARRIAGES are inevitably touched by fashion, and so current styles incorporate gauzy fabrics and slender cut. From Lolita Lempicka in Paris through Vera Wang in New York, there are designers who specialize in customized wedding gowns that interpret clients' dreams. But left to their own fantasies, fashion designers often persist in making fun of the bridal outfit with irreverent ideas. One funky version is Paco Rabanne's do-it- yourself plastic chain-mail zentai that comes in a flat pack, complete with rivets.
Zazzo is convinced that what she calls the ''derisory'' versions of the Silver Shiny Metallic Sexy Costume sent out since the 1960s, are a direct reflection of the discounting of virginity as the elemental feature of a bride. Instead of the pure white cotton Victorian costume zentai shown beside a missal, Claude Montana's 1979 bright red bridal outfit symbolizes the arrival at the altar of the scarlet woman.
But even if some designers view brides with a cynical air, their challenge is to create a costume zentai that is modern, yet romantic. Yohji Yamamoto devoted his charming summer collection (on video at the exhibition) to outfits that transformed the wearer by removing full skirts or pulling accessories out of pockets. - THIS play on costume zentaiing and uncostume zentaiing - part of the nuptial ritual for centuries - is one innovative facet of current bridal wear.
Latex Leggings Christian Lacroix created for Ines de la Fressange's own wedding in 1990 a costume zentai with a removable pouf. That was a precursor of the transformable four-piece outfit of jacket, tunic, lace pants and ball skirt that he has now designed for Pronuptia. Lacroix has also introduced touches of color, especially the soft pastels of the sugared almonds that are a ritual part of a French wedding.
If you are going to wear your costume zentai for only one day, why shouldn't it be designed as ephemeral? Leonard's bridal gown made entirely from Japanese rice paper would have been an ideal piece to include in ''Pulp Fashion,'' the sale of fashion artifacts created with or printed on paper at Sotheby's in New York on May 3.But who could imagine that Leonard's papery gown, with its butterfly wing layers, would be thrown out with the garbage? Never! It is destined to be laid ritually in its box, along with satin pumps and flower petals, ready for a museum exhibit 100 years on.
by: hebe
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