The Wedding Dress: Exhibition

Weddings. The ‘most important day of a woman’s life’, as we grow up believing. From the release of the doves to the five-tier wedding cake and the quivering of your hands as rings are exchanged. Every girl has had some sort of fantasy about this day, walking down the aisle, with the man of her dreams at the end waiting.

Over the weekend, I visited the National Museum of Singapore to see the wedding dress exhibit (“The Wedding Dress: 200 Years of Wedding Fashion”), and was pleasantly surprised. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this was altogether a great exhibit.

As I headed downstairs to where the exhibit hall is, outside the actual exhibition, a few ‘Singaporean’ wedding dresses are shown. By that they don’t actually mean traditional wedding dresses by the way, though they did show Peranakan wedding attire (for those of you that don’t know, ‘Peranakan’ refers to descendants of the Chinese that emigrated here back in the day). Basically, by this they meant wedding dresses that Singaporeans had worn previously in weddings. Some of them were nice, however I’m not one for the extremely beaded. I do loooooove lace though, and there was a lot of that! So delicate and beautiful, perfectly reflecting how a young women is when going into one of the most important days of their lives.

The dresses were beautiful. It was amazing to see the transformation of dresses beginning with the corsets and stiff, cage-like skirts with draping over them that must have been a pain in the ass to walk down an aisle with. From there it evolved to the flapper style dresses and bonnets, ever so reminiscent of the ‘Sense and Sensibility’ style wedding bonnets.

And then there were the iconic dresses of our time. You cannot possibly imagine the mini-heart attack I went through. Realizing that I was in the same room as a John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood and Vera Wang… ALL IN ONE ROOM!

John Galliano

Vivienne Westwood

Vera Wang

Gwen Stefani’s wedding dress, designed by Galliano, was absolutely gorgeous. I loved the pink at the bottom; it really made it different, definitely not the bad kind of different. Fortunately, there wasn’t the same kind of effect as someone dip-dying hair (I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone, but dip-dying is just not my thing unless it’s perfect, *cough *Rachel Bilson *cough *).   

And the absolute queen of wedding dresses. Miss Vera Wang. Holy bejeezus. Just marry me right now. The gorgeous fabric and layering, Wang’s prowess just emanating in the beautifully tailored dress… Yes it may not have been my favorite dress of hers, but it was an experience being close to one.

All in all I did love the exhibit, it was small and cozy, which also meant that it was crowded and annoyingly loud. However, I definitely miss exhibitions with fashion. I think the last one I went to being the Valentino exhibit here… that was a looong time ago. Take note other museums, fashion IS art, give designers some credit, not all of us can fly off to a runway show.

-       Till my next venture

From, A Style Outsider