Just Say "I Don't" to the 80s
October 2, 2015 2:44 PM   Subscribe

 
Watch with the sound off to avoid distracting and weird music choices.
posted by howfar at 2:49 PM on October 2, 2015 [6 favorites]


HA. Definitely stay for the ending.
posted by olinerd at 2:52 PM on October 2, 2015 [11 favorites]


I really enjoy these. Constantly trying to talk museums into doing this sort of thing.

Personally, I love the statueseque, simple silhouettes of 40s wedding gowns (my grandmother wore one like the one in the video). It's a little heartbreaking watching the transition from that to the undergarment-heavy flounce of the 50s.

The 80s make for an interesting mashup of high Victorian with 1940s. But then that kind of describes 80% of that decade's fashion. The 90s, oughts and 2015 seemed less well defined to me, but it's harder to boil down recent history because its complexities are still more obvious to us, and its distinctive characteristics haven't yet been blown out of proportion.
posted by Miko at 2:55 PM on October 2, 2015 [11 favorites]


Yes I was just thinking how the 80s did have that streak of "1940s but Poofier" in it. Like the fashion world's own streak of neo-conservatism
posted by The Whelk at 2:57 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


At the time I'd say it sort of played less conservative and more pro-female-empowerment (I'm in a suit, but feminine!) and went well with the whole return-to-the-workplace discourse. But yeah, there was also a return to business-focused conservatism which doubtless influenced that.
posted by Miko at 2:59 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


These vids always irk me, as it's one example for a decade. And basically for W.A.S.P.

Were these also what people wore, or what famous/"important" fashion designers created?
posted by alex_skazat at 3:03 PM on October 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


Color me surprised that dresses with sleeves are apparently back. That was not my experience shopping for a dress last year, but being in St. Louis might have had something to do with that.
posted by likeatoaster at 3:08 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Her bangs were NOT big enough for the 80s and neither was the rest of her hair. Also: heavier makeup needed.

(I went to so many 80s weddings. SO MANY).
posted by emjaybee at 3:13 PM on October 2, 2015 [12 favorites]


I liked all those dresses. I like weddings. I like happy brides and grooms. You see someone super happy about getting married, even in a dress you wouldn't have picked out or looks weird hanging on a hanger, and it's really lovely to see happy and excited people.

I want to confess something. I think Princess Diana's wedding gown was weird-looking. It looked like a down comforter to me. I think I will change my mind on it at least once in the next 20 years.

I thought Kim Kardashian's wedding dress (the one she married Kanye in) was weird looking at when I first saw it, but the last time I saw it, I thought it looked gorgeous on her.

I like how fashion can look amazing and then we laugh at it 20 years later and then it looks amazing once again. I used to cringe at the 80s, but now I think it's all fun looking, and I'm cringing at the 90s. I'm looking forward to it becoming fun again.
posted by discopolo at 3:15 PM on October 2, 2015 [9 favorites]


one example for a decade.

It's reductive, yeah. Still find it a bit interesting. 1965 looked weird, but I wasn't alive them. My mom got married in '68 in a minidress, and judging by some of her friends' and peers' photos, that wasn't uncommon.
posted by Miko at 3:15 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Diana's gown was awful. She looked like she was standing in the middle of a giant comedy cake made to contain a hidden dancer. The thing might have had wheels under it. The combination of her slight frame and her immediate illness (she was vomiting from anxiety) just made the whole thing ghastly. Hard to believe it was more influential than Kate Middleton's.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:26 PM on October 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


Great ending, but I've never been happier that I got married in black and pink vinyl.
posted by kyrademon at 3:27 PM on October 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


Were these also what people wore, or what famous/"important" fashion designers created?

40s dress: you could only have that if you were rich, because clothing rationing would have made it out of reach for lots of women. Well into the late 40s, women tended to wear a suit to get married, with a short skirt.

70s dress: way too hippie for most women. You would have seen longer sleeves with hair in a bun or ringlets, with flowers, or, as my sister-in-law wore, a giant floppy sunhat/garden-party look.

80s: absolutely accurate, they all had leg-of-mutton sleeves and that faux-Victorian beaded back/neck thing going. Sometimes also a huge bustle. The Victorian thing actually started in the 70s, and just transformed from "Little House on the Prairie-ish" to "MOAR POOF."
posted by emjaybee at 3:27 PM on October 2, 2015 [10 favorites]


The 80s make for an interesting mashup of high Victorian with 1940s. But then that kind of describes 80% of that decade's fashion. The 90s, oughts and 2015 seemed less well defined to me, but it's harder to boil down recent history because its complexities are still more obvious to us, and its distinctive characteristics haven't yet been blown out of proportion.

Also tricky: It's not like styles shift at the mid-decade mark on the dot. My friends were going through the first wave of weddings[*] from 1990-1999, and the dresses pre-Carolyn Bessette Kennedy were definitely more 1980s-influenced with big trains, lace sleeve action, elaborate bodice goings-on, etc. Then ol' CBK hit the scene in 1996 with her flawlessly tailored, incredibly simple Narciso Rodriguez dress, and that prompted a big aesthetic shift.

(To be fair, the red carpet was already leaning in that direction, but bridal fashion is rarely a trend-setter.)

Anyway, the tl;dr is that my friends who got married post-1996 did so in radically more simple dresses -- but the inflection point for the change and the definitive 1990s bridal look didn't really hit until after 1995. So that's one tricky thing with the video here. It's hard to vividly illustrate moments when those dress styles suddenly rest wrong on the eye.


* Anecdotally, I've noticed three waves of weddings as my Gen X cohort & I move through adulthood. Wave #1 is right after college graduation, wave #2 is right around mid- to late-twenties, and wave #3 are the folks in their mid- to late-thirties[**].

** Even more anecdotally, the weddings of my pals in their late 30s? SO MUCH MORE FUN.
posted by sobell at 3:37 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'd like to see these projected out to the next ten decades. 2065, Martian nostalgia revival...
posted by moonmilk at 3:40 PM on October 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


The 1930s one is spot-on.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:44 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


I love that 1920s dress so much. I also love the enormous flowers of the Edwardian/Flapper brides.
posted by thivaia at 3:56 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


I enjoyed that but I was hoping for more dresses. I really didn't need the scenes of the model in her underwear being dressed. That said, my least favorite was the last (2015) and my favorite was the first (1915.)

I got married about 4 months after Diana and I got to design my dress because my Mother-in-law to be was a professional seamstress. However, she lived in Japan and I lived in California so I didn't see the actual dress until 3 days before the wedding. She sent me swatches and I sent her measurements and sketches. My dress was lovely and it still looks lovely to my eyes, not dated at all. Probably because it was not overly ornate, but rather simple.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:58 PM on October 2, 2015


I love them all.

Glad to see I got married in the fashionable sleeve length, last year. It certainly wasn't on purpose but it's nice to be stylish now and then.
posted by elizilla at 4:00 PM on October 2, 2015


There's a boatload of reasons why I'm glad I didn't live in the 30s but damn,...those clothes, and the music, the movies, the art, the design, the woodworking tools...sigh.
posted by bonobothegreat at 4:04 PM on October 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


80s: absolutely accurate, they all had leg-of-mutton sleeves and that faux-Victorian beaded back/neck thing going. Sometimes also a huge bustle. The Victorian thing actually started in the 70s, and just transformed from "Little House on the Prairie-ish" to "MOAR POOF."

The David Tennant/Katherine Tate production of "Much Ado About Nothing" was set in the 80's, and the show's designers had way too much fun loading the thing up with all sorts of silly 80's kitsch. Hero's wedding dress was supposedly based on Princess Diana's, but it looked like it was turned up to, like, a million. (there was also a great sight gag where Katherine Tate's Beatrice had a stuffy nose, but there was no tissue handy so she used some of the train because it was just that long.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:06 PM on October 2, 2015 [5 favorites]


I really liked the first three, and the 1975 dress. I got married in 1990 in a dress I bought a year or so before, so I had big hair, but the dress was (relatively, for the times) un-pouffy, although it did have puff sleeves, now I think about it.

The fashion in the UK for the last 15 years or so has been for strapless dresses, whether the bride is bursting out of the top of it or so flat-chested that there's nothing to fill the cups. Brides I know say that the stores have 90% strapless and little else to choose from. Some ministers will refuse to marry a bride in church if she's wearing a strapless dress, hence the bridal stores also sell little lacy bolero jackets.

The most beautiful wedding dress I ever saw was our very own Pink Superhero's. Stunning.

And the last wedding I went to (as a guest), I wore a dress designed by the man who designed Princess Diana's wedding dress. It was elegant and understated, unlike the taffeta horror she wore. I never understand why wedding guests get so wound up about what to wear for a wedding. Nobody takes a blind bit of notice of the guests' outfits, only the bride's.
posted by essexjan at 4:11 PM on October 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


The 1930s one with the lace coat was gorgeous. The 1980s one was too shudderingly accurate. The 2015? head scratcher.

I loved and continue to love Diana's gown. It was a perfect soufflé. Nobody remembers Sarah Ferguson's gown, just five years later.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 4:13 PM on October 2, 2015


Sigh. I love those big 80s princess dresses and get tired of hearing 'em held up as a crime against matrimonial fashion. How many times in your life do you get the excuse to dress up like a goddamn fairy princess? It's your wedding, go nuts! The trend now generally seems to be "plain white tube". Ugh. (It really isn't that I'm down on people wearing boring stuff if that's what they like. But there's a whole lot of, "Ugh, that awful 80s shit, with all the frills and fancy stuff! Thank goodness now we're over that and the modern bride spends her special day wearing a plain white tube!")
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:15 PM on October 2, 2015 [9 favorites]


My mother got married in a green velvet suit with a little hat during WWII. My dad's cousin in Ireland's wife got married around the same time in an almost identical outfit, as did one of my best friend's parents. I think it was in some ways unpatriotic to have a lavish fancy wedding during the war, and of course there were rations and shortages too. As a kid I felt bad that my mom did not have a beautiful wedding gown, but it never bothered her and my parents were married for 58 years when my Dad passed away.

I had pretty much the 70s hippy wedding dress, that I made myself, and the identical coronet of daisies in my hair. We had a civil wedding but I carried my grandmother's Polish prayerbook with flowers and ribbons that she had at her wedding.

I must admit to loving wedding dresses, had bride dolls and bride paper dolls as a kid, and just loved seeing all those old glamourous gowns. I've not been to many weddings recently, but my two daughters in law had very simple gowns, no veils, and were married on beaches. My niece who married an Italian guy had one of those wedding cake dresses that one can barely sit down in.

I have to say I think my favorite among the gowns shown was the one from the 20s, they had such elegant style.
posted by mermayd at 4:19 PM on October 2, 2015


I assume the 1945 dress was missing a layer, because her underwear showed through which isn't what I associate with that era.

I like these kinds of videos, even though of course reality is much less organized, as people have noted above.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:20 PM on October 2, 2015


I really enjoy these. Constantly trying to talk museums into doing this sort of thing.

The costume museum here did a little mini-exhibit on wedding dresses, and it was lovely and awesome.

The 90s, oughts and 2015 seemed less well defined to me

See, I thought that too, and then I went to the above exhibit, and saw a dress from 2009. I just went, yup, that's the oughts right there-- sweetheart neckline with a jeweled belt around the waist, I think (something like this). It's amazing how much it managed to looked dated to me in the span of 6 years or so. I got married in 2011; my maid of honor was with me and reassured me that mine was more timeless-- I think what really happened was I managed to get a slightly more current dress, and that other bride managed to just get the tail end of something that was about to go out of fashion.
posted by damayanti at 4:22 PM on October 2, 2015


40s dress: you could only have that if you were rich, because clothing rationing would have made it out of reach for lots of women. Well into the late 40s, women tended to wear a suit to get married, with a short skirt.

I think that's overstated. Like I said, my grandmother had a dress like that right at the end of the war, and she was most definitely not rich. My grandfather was an Army NCO and she was a secretary. I'm sure this dress is better quality than hers because it's in somebody's costume collection, but the style was certainly in reach for postwar US brides (the US had much less clothing rationing than the UK).

I agree that a lot of women wore suits and non-white dresses, though.
posted by Miko at 4:23 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


No fear, Ursula Hitler, it's not that I hate fun. Plain white sheath dresses look uncomfortable and dull to me. Personally, I would look terrible in one. If I ever do get married, I'm going to see how much it would cost me to get a replica of Lydia's wedding dress from Beetlejuice.
posted by Countess Elena at 4:23 PM on October 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


Sorry, Vera Wang, but if I ever get married I'm doing it in motherfucking sleeves like a civilized human being.

(said the spinster who was pulling the cat out of the garbage five minutes ago and is currently eating a supper of boiled potatoes out of a Pyrex bake-n-serve while browsing Metafilter.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:30 PM on October 2, 2015 [26 favorites]


I got married about 4 months after Diana and I got to design my dress because my Mother-in-law to be was a professional seamstress.

Picture of dress (and any cats in the vicinity) if you've got one? I bet it looks amazing.

(I'll probably never get married, but I will always love seeing wedding dresses and happy brides.)
posted by discopolo at 4:37 PM on October 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


Speaking of fabric rationing, you can sometimes find vintage 40s dresses made from parachute silk.
posted by you're a kitty! at 4:46 PM on October 2, 2015 [9 favorites]


Also, it's easy to hate on the 80s, and yet. Once in a very long while it worked.
posted by you're a kitty! at 4:52 PM on October 2, 2015 [11 favorites]


I got married in jeans and a white t-shirt with a little lace trim in 2000. I also eloped. I was in high school and went to prom in the 80s. The dress was painfully accurate.
posted by Sophie1 at 4:54 PM on October 2, 2015


The fashion in the UK for the last 15 years or so has been for strapless dresses, whether the bride is bursting out of the top of it or so flat-chested that there's nothing to fill the cups.

I remember reading somewhere that strapless dresses (which are epidemic in the U.S. as well) were pushed heavily by bridal manufacturers because they don't have to mess about with sleeves or necklines . Therefore, production processes are much more streamlined (read: cheaper), and it's lucrative to crank out the strapless dresses. After all, the customer bears the costs of tailoring to make the dress look good on her.
posted by sobell at 4:55 PM on October 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


I got married for the first time in 1977 and the 1975 dress appears to actually be my wedding dress. It is kind of unsettling.
posted by djinn dandy at 4:59 PM on October 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


Would that 30s one have actually been worn with the lace open like that? It didn't look quite right to me.
posted by Tentacle of Trust at 5:33 PM on October 2, 2015


Kate Middleton's

I think Kate's dress was mostly an updated version of Grace Kelly's wedding gown. I don't think she was trying to be a trendsetter other than bringing back sleeves.
posted by fuse theorem at 5:36 PM on October 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


My first marriage was in the mid 80s, but my dress was from the turn of the century. In the little town where I went to college was a little curio shop. It was next to the bar where I worked, and I spent a lot of time in there chatting with the lady who ran it. When I told her I was getting married, but a fancy dress wasn't really my style or my budget, she brought me her wedding dress, which had been her mother's wedding dress also. She said since she never had daughters, she wanted the dress to go to somewone who would love it. It's the most gorgeous thing...hand watered silk and seed pearls, but somehow still simple and elegant.

The marriage only lasted 7 years, but I still have the dress. It just now occurred to me that I should see if the Texas Women's University wants it for their fashion museum, since she and I were both TWU alums and it's a beautiful example of the late 19th century fashion as worn by Texas women of the era.

Edit to add, my second wedding, in the 90s, I went full on cupcake dress. I did. It was a stupid big dress. My limo driver referred to it as The Beast when he had to carry it. True story. Heh.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 5:41 PM on October 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


Would that 30s one have actually been worn with the lace open like that? It didn't look quite right to me.

No, it would've been buttoned. I wore a dress almost exactly like that, except the overlayer was sheer rather than lace, but same thing with the million tiny buttons. We have a picture of a relative wearing it in the 1930s and the overlayer is buttoned up. I wonder if they just didn't want to do the buttons to save time, or if they wanted to save wear and tear on the dress?
posted by LobsterMitten at 5:49 PM on October 2, 2015


The 1955 is accurate based on my parents wedding photos (although her crinoline is not big enough, her skirt should stick out more.)
posted by vespabelle at 6:22 PM on October 2, 2015


I may have told this story before, but when I was a maid of honor it was my job to hold the bride's full skirt when she had to go to the toilet. She only needed my services once. She was like some kind of reverse camel or something.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:52 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Please, please, please some of you Metafilter brides post a photo of your wedding gown. I would love to see them after reading these stories!!
posted by SweetTeaAndABiscuit at 6:54 PM on October 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


The 70's dress needed a giant sun hat.

I wore pale green when I got married, in a prom dress from the plus sized department of Macy's because I was 8 1/2 months pregnant. Spaghetti straps and empire waist, representing 2001.
posted by Ruki at 6:54 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


(Plus sized because maternity wedding dresses weren't a thing yet. I can't zip up that dress now, so not-sizeist.)
posted by Ruki at 6:57 PM on October 2, 2015


My parents got married in 1985. Somehow, even though my mom's dress was the poofiest thing ever, they still looked lovely.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:14 PM on October 2, 2015 [6 favorites]


My parents eloped, so Mom didn't have a wedding dress per se. But she tells the story of choosing a long-sleeved dress to wear that day because her arm was still covered with bruises from the blood tests and she didn't want the justice of the peace to get the wrong idea about Dad.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:29 PM on October 2, 2015


My parents got married in '52 and my mom wore a skirt suit because she didn't give a fuck (then or ever) and she was like three month's pregnant.
posted by octothorpe at 7:37 PM on October 2, 2015 [10 favorites]


I'm getting married in, uh, 15 days now, and I would say 2015 looks pretty right. Lots and lots of illusion lace tops because women don't want strapless and slowly are dragging the manufacturers back it seems.

I was excited for the videos, but I wished they had a version with someone who had more of a body. Or models with body types that were in vogue for each decade. The 20s & the 70s looked best because of that, I think.
posted by dame at 7:42 PM on October 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


To me, it's been going downhill since 1915.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 7:57 PM on October 2, 2015


I feel like half the women I know who got married and wore an Expensive Proper Modern Wedding Dress in the last 10 years got one with a dropped waist. I was surprised that wasn't picked as the iconic look of 2005, although maybe it's more 2010.
posted by gatorae at 8:08 PM on October 2, 2015


Metafilter: going downhill since 1915.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:33 PM on October 2, 2015


I got married in the early 90s and my dress had a poofy skirt and a poofy ruffly bit at the sleeves and bust. My mom, bless her heart, had found and purchased about 6 Gunne Sax-type dresses that were very 80s (lots of lace, dropped waists) and very not me (I was living halfway across the country at the time and really not into the whole wedding planning thing), so the day before the wedding we went to a bridal store as a last-ditch effort. I went in, found a dress that fit, picked a veil from the wall and plopped it on my head, and that was it.

My mom kept all the lacy 80s dresses, and about 10 years ago we took all of them to the local Goodwill. I'm sure some retro types were thrilled to find them. Ironically, I think she re-sold my actual wedding dress within a month or two of the wedding.
posted by mogget at 8:40 PM on October 2, 2015


Aww. Cute ending!

I found 1935 quite striking. Seems like fashion-wise, we kind of stuck at '55. Not just fashion-wise.
posted by latkes at 8:51 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


My parents got married in '52 and my mom wore a skirt suit because she didn't give a fuck (then or ever) and she was like three month's pregnant.

Yeah, my mom wore an un-ornamented orange dress. I thought that white was not de rigueur until recently?
posted by latkes at 8:53 PM on October 2, 2015


I got married a year and a half ago in this (pic is not me). David's. I loved it.
posted by Miko at 8:54 PM on October 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


I wore pale green when I got married, in a prom dress from the plus sized department of Macy's because I was 8 1/2 months pregnant. Spaghetti straps and empire waist, representing 2001.

Green wedding dress brigade reporting in. I got married in June in a dress my sister made and it is the most amazing thing I have ever put on my body. I can't wait to wear it again.
posted by quaking fajita at 8:57 PM on October 2, 2015 [6 favorites]


I love these videos even though there's lots to nitpick.

My two weddings were 1990 and 2000 and I can see how I fell at the midpoint for the 1990 one but the second time around I had an ivory custom thing that was sort of 20s influenced (probably not so great for me and my weight and my boobs, but that was what I wanted) and no veil because the symbolism didn't work and neither did a veil for my short hair. I doubt my wedding photos will look timeless because: kilts (we're into that kind of thing and would do it that way again) but I don't think my dress fits the periodization at all.
posted by immlass at 9:08 PM on October 2, 2015


It's amazing how much it managed to looked dated to me in the span of 6 years or so.

This is one of the things I find so fascinating about fashion. I am not on top of fashion trends at all so I'm not really conscious of when things are changing. I remember thinking the clothing I saw on TV in the 90s was so hip and cool and would never go out of style. And then in the mid-00s I was like "What was I thinking?" And then I look at the clothing of the mid-00s and it's the same thing. Somehow fashion changes and while I don't notice the change as it is happening, I sure notice after it is over. It also adds to my paranoia about going shopping. How do you know what is really timeless?
posted by Anonymous at 9:12 PM on October 2, 2015


I wore this Alice by Temperley cocktail dress at my wedding a few years ago. There was a long wedding dress version but I like the neckline on the short version better.
posted by crush-onastick at 9:21 PM on October 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


I love all of these. I wonder how much 2015 aesthetic plays into the styling and choice of dress to highlight, though, because a lot of these strike me as still somehow suiting modern taste and our conception of what embodies past styles. I wonder if they made a "wedding dress retrospective" in 2025 if the dresses they'd pick for the 20th century would be slightly different than these.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 9:27 PM on October 2, 2015 [5 favorites]



I love all of these. I wonder how much 2015 aesthetic plays into the styling and choice of dress to highlight, though


I think the contemporary aesthetic shows up not just in the choices of the dresses, but also in the model herself and the undergarment. It's still a fun video, but very tied to the here and now.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:54 PM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Got married in mid 1990s in a tea length dress similar to this but with solid sleeves. 15 years later I got it right on the second try when I upgraded both groom and outfit. I'm quite proud to say I made most of the outfit: olive green corset, double-layer skirt, earrings, necklace and peacock feather/beaded dragonfly accessory on the hat. The hat was made by the amazing Julie Stoike of Bo-Peep Millinery, I thrifted the olive green jacket and added the matching frilly cuffs, and already had the boots. And I'll go naked before attempting to work with boning again.
posted by Beti at 10:04 PM on October 2, 2015


so flat-chested that there's nothing to fill the cups

I thought it was a little odd that they picked a model who did this very thing. If they are going to go to all the trouble to make this video, why wouldn't they tailor the dresses to fit that gal? Or at least give her a little padding or something. That 2005 dress looked like it was about to fall down to the floor.
posted by Beti at 10:20 PM on October 2, 2015


Nobody remembers Sarah Ferguson's gown, just five years later. Oh, I dunno. I remember it because it was just so flattering on her. Certainly much nicer than Diana's explosion of material which didn't flatter her at all, in my opinion (usually I don't have an opinion on wedding dresses because that's just not my thing).

Out of these ones, I like the first two and the 70's one the best.
posted by h00py at 12:07 AM on October 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


I liked all of them.

I must say for someone well over 100 years old by the end of the video, she held her age very well.
posted by maxwelton at 12:22 AM on October 3, 2015 [4 favorites]


Yeah. Poor people never wore this stuff. They went with their Sunday clothing or a slight upgrade from that. Will have to ask my mom about her first wedding gown (1965) which was the only "white" one in the former generations for my family (we played with the veil as kids).

One grandmother (upper middle class) wore a brown (?) costume at her wedding; grandpa in uniform (1942). The other (working class) a slightly patteren simple gown; grandpa a simple suit (1939). My Mom wore a long off-white dress with a big pink flower pattern when marrying Dad (1974). No veil but big hair already then. My Aunt married in a silver-black Dirndl. My sister was more traditional but also cream not white (2009) with a rather strange anachronistic veil (looked like 1915 that one). At her second wedding (2012) the dress looked quite a bit like the 2005 example here though.

If I ever get married (which is highly unlikely) I will wear a simple evening gown or a suit for shits and giggles.
posted by ZeroAmbition at 3:40 AM on October 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


Fun video - I'd love to see a museum show with real dresses.
For my wedding in -91, my friend who had just graduated with honors from fashion school made me a very short shift for dancing at night, and then a long coat with long sleeves to wear over it in church. I still love party coats over short as a style.
Fun fact: I wore no underwear, it would have ruined the look, but bought some new stuff anyway, because hey, it's my wedding.
Far later, my sister gave me our mother's wedding dress, which had been modified after her wedding. It turned out to have a lot of the same details as my own: tiny buttons, ribbon-embroidery, medieval-inspired sleeves (but that was an element she had removed after the wedding). The altered version was beautiful and I wore it a couple of times, but it was too fragile to be worn on a regular basis.

Most of my friends (except the fashion designer) wore meringues, as we called them back then. I might have, too, if we hadn't chosen a modern church for our wedding.
posted by mumimor at 5:24 AM on October 3, 2015


I wonder how much 2015 aesthetic plays into the styling and choice of dress to highlight, though

Presentism - it's pretty much unavoidable.
posted by Miko at 7:39 AM on October 3, 2015 [4 favorites]


I got married in 1994 and had a great dressmaker knock off the dress in this blog picture (the one with the blue sash). He copied it perfectly (for a short non-model person.) The dumb photographer didn't take a single picture of the back, which we didn't realize until we got the pictures back after the dress was all sealed up in an acid free storage box thingy. It was so poofy, I loved it.

Speaking of fabric rationing, you can sometimes find vintage 40s dresses made from parachute silk.

My friend is in the Walking Dead (Olivia) and had a dress made out of parachutes for the premiere of the new season.
posted by artychoke at 8:09 AM on October 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


I love the 1975 one and the 2015 one the best.
posted by Windigo at 8:53 AM on October 3, 2015


I got married this August and my dress looks way more 1955 than 2015, which was what i was going for.

I agree with the earlier poster that the 2015 dress has too much sleeve - everything I saw while looking (and almost all of the bride dresses I've seen on my FB feed this summer) are long and strapless.
posted by hopeless romantique at 9:21 AM on October 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


I feel like half the women I know who got married and wore an Expensive Proper Modern Wedding Dress in the last 10 years got one with a dropped waist.

::raises hand:: Guilty here, married in 2011 in this number. I agree that it reads more 2010s than oughts, but maybe that's wistful thinking on my part. Just doing some quick googling for "Maggie sottero dress 20XX" collection it looks like 2007/2008 were really the transition years, with the parallel searches for "David's bridal 20XX" lagging behind a bit.
posted by damayanti at 9:27 AM on October 3, 2015


You all look so lovely in your dresses! I really love looking at wedding dresses. If it's what you wanted and you're happy, you'll look wonderful, no matter how '80s it is. I'm glad they gave the model a chance to smile a bit.

I got married in September 2014 and actually bought the first wedding dress I tried on (though I tried on several). It was at a trunk sale and it fit right off the rack, though I wound up changing the back a little. I was steadfastly "no lace, no veil"...it had a little lace and there was a veil (though not over my face). I was so worried about being an unattractive bride, and I know, wedding industrial complex or whatever, and it's strapless and will probably look dated soon, but the dress made me happy and gave me a lot of self-confidence, which is a gift and a lot to ask of a few (okay, several) yards of fabric.
posted by ilana at 10:09 AM on October 3, 2015 [4 favorites]


I got married in 2003, in a big gold silk ballgown. I wanted a red dress, but my mother couldn't bring herself to approve, so we compromised on gold. I got a costumer for a local small dance and theater company to make it for me, which is a path I highly recommend.

We got married in a winery, and just as I was waiting to walk down the aisle outside the banquet room we'd reserved for the wedding, a tour group of about 65 people poured into the public part of the winery. I had no less than a dozen strangers swoop by and tell me that they thought my wedding dress was the most beautiful one they'd ever seen. There were a lot of great things about my wedding day, but that dress was definitely one of them. 12 years later, it doesn't look that dated to me -- unusual, perhaps, but not dated.
posted by KathrynT at 10:18 AM on October 3, 2015 [7 favorites]


I have never been married, but I can offer you my parents' wedding photo album from August 1962, with a bonus photo of my Grandma and Grandpa Swan in their wedding clothes in September 1929. Neither dress looks like the corresponding dress from the video timeline. My mother's wedding gown, which she made herself, was a simple strapless white satin with a train, which she wore with a little lace jacket, so it looks like a sort of mashup of the 1935 and 2005 dresses. My grandmother's dress was simply a nice blue street dress, not a wedding gown.

I thought most of these dresses were quite attractive, though the 1985 dress was an eyesore and I was surprised by how much I disliked the 2015 dress, since I don't generally dislike the styles of today. But none of them would suit me. If I were to get married now, I would sew my own dress and it would be a simple dress in a cocktail length. I don't even know that I'd make it in cream as I am so fair-skinned that cream washes me out, and white looks terrible on me. I might knit or sew a cream lace jacket to wear over a coloured dress to make it look more bridal. I'd love to wear my mother's pearl tiara with whatever I choose, but I doubt I could make it look right given that I have a completely different hairstyle and won't be wearing a traditional wedding gown.

And shameless self-link here, but a few years back I wrote a post of selected patterns for knitted wedding dresses. The patterns still strike me as being a nice collection.
posted by orange swan at 10:38 AM on October 3, 2015 [5 favorites]


The "1945" hairstyle really worked for her. I'm surprised it's not more popular today.
posted by xedrik at 3:27 PM on October 3, 2015


I'm surprised it's not more popular today.

I love those hairstyles too, but I can tell you why they're not more popular. Deceptively (because they look so loose and natural) those hairstyles are a massive pain in the ass. And they don't like clean hair. And it looks like a snood is involved.
posted by Miko at 7:29 PM on October 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


I definitely get the sense in this series that the people putting it on can't stand the 1980s. Every single time these things hit that era, they go for the full clown makeup and hair spray, whlie in the 1970s they go for a more tastefully applied flower-child look.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:03 AM on October 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


I dunno man, do you remember the 80s...ya know without tears? I remember a lot of clown makeup and hairspray. Heh.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:08 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I agree, the 80s have become the favorite decade to hate on, and the tropes have gotten pretty flat and one-note. I remember it well and participated in some of the trends. Like people who live in any era, we considered ourselves to look good and to be breaking with dated looks from the past. In fact, I've relished the deep ironies of watching the 70s become a hip decade to fetishize, because in the 1980s the horror of wearing something from the 70s was pronounced. The 70s were considered the 20th century's absolute fashion nadir, a decade best forgotten utterly. And we thought we looked pretty good in the 80s. Yeah, makeup was heavy, and colors were bold and exaggerated, but there were a lot of different kinds of looks, not just one, and like any era there were micro-trends season by season and year by year, and different regional styles, too. The OP fresh freckled beach kid look was big, too, as was the colorful, Euro-international Benetton look, the whole preppy/Fair Isle thing, the baggy clothes look, the acid-wash look, the 50s retro/rockabilly look, the New Wave/nerdy thing, rap and hip-hop athletic wear/parachute pants, that sort of stretchy/dancey wacky mixup look of Boy George and Lisa Lisa et al, etc. Not all of them featured poofs and clown makeup.
posted by Miko at 9:18 AM on October 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


I was a teenager in the 80s. yeah its an easy target but the one thing I hated the most was the SHOULDER PADS!!! I am 5'9" and as a teenage girl felt self-conscious of my relatively Amazonian stature. I cut those things out immediately every time :P
posted by supermedusa at 11:06 AM on October 4, 2015


The shoulder pads (shudder). They were in tshirts. Why? Who thought that was a good idea?
posted by sfkiddo at 1:22 PM on October 4, 2015


Miko, I have to sympathise. I once asserted to my mother (who had seen fashions go in cycles before) that bell bottoms would never be back. The toga would come back before those hideous things!

She told me some oblique story about her mother's cuban heels that I didn't really understand until I looked up what they were on wikipedia a few years ago and found that they come back in style every generation, like clockwork.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:01 PM on October 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


The shoulder pads: I loved them, because I was not tall, then or now, and it was one way of seeming more imposing.

I had a set of weird foam things that clung to your shoulder by themselves: they were worn under tshirts and other non-tailored things.
posted by jrochest at 2:20 AM on October 5, 2015


Also: what I really notice about all of these videos is that the clothes don't really seem to fit the model. I assume that they're not doing them up in the back -- either that or she is two or three sizes smaller than the clothes. Whatever the reason, they seem baggy and shapeless, and for some eras (the 40s, 50s and 80s) I really want her to be curvier, to fill the clothes out.
posted by jrochest at 2:23 AM on October 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


I agree, jrochest. AT a minimum she really needs period undergarments as well to approximate the trendy body shape. The 30s is pretty abysmal in terms of fit - it hangs like a sack on her, when the ideal was really a graceful, softly curving column with clothes fitting relatively closely. I get that the lace top would not be tight-fitting over the sheeath which is, but still, it all looks just poorly draped.
posted by Miko at 6:15 AM on October 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


I liked the proper, serious shoulder pads - the ones that actually affected the line of the jacket and were combined with a defined waist and hip. The full Alexis Carringtons. I was basically tentpole-shaped when they were in fashion, and they helped give me the illusion of an hourglass figure.

It was the sad little halfhearted half-moons that just sort of lurked under soft fabrics like they know didn't quite know how they got there or what they were supposed to be doing that got cut out the minute they got home. (The nice thing is, they made great bra-stuffers.)

And anyone who glorifies 1970's fashion obviously never had to wear their cousin's hand-me-downs from the late 1970's and experience the evil of thick doubleknit polyester pants.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:19 AM on October 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


I got married in 2004 and that dress is exactly right, and all the dresses I looked at looked very similar.
posted by gaspode at 6:37 AM on October 5, 2015


I remember how much 70's fashion was scoffed at. No-one could ever imagine wearing flares ever again. I think polyester was a crime against humanity. And huge rounded lapels. Surely that's not become fashionable again, right?

Shoulder pads in the 80's did get very scary though, particularly if you were wearing a shirt with them and then a waistcoat and then a jacket. Thankfully, that was never really a wedding thing, except maybe amongst the guests.
posted by h00py at 6:43 AM on October 5, 2015


I admit, I too went full Alexis Carrington for a phase. To be fair, I lived in Dallas. Big hair and big shoulders were camouflage in this town.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:15 AM on October 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oh my lord, both my cousins were married in the 1980s (in New Jersey!) and was that 80s dress ever spot-on.

I loved the 1930s look--and it's interesting, I'd say that was the period whose fashion I knew least about. I couldn't have predicted a style like that.

The 1960s and 70s ones both surprised me a little--mostly because my primary reference is my mother, who was married in 1970 and wore this tiny little white minidress with billowy sleeves. I couldn't see her dress fitting anywhere in that continuum.

So do we have the 2000s to blame for the awful rise of strapless dresses that look like they're going to fall off (or look like a big 1950s car hood above someone's bosom)? That one they used was, sad to say, a prime example. I'm so glad to see that sleeves are coming back this decade (please? please? Strapless looks so dreadful on almost anyone).
posted by dlugoczaj at 9:10 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I got married in 2006, and had a hell of a time finding something that wasn't strapless and didn't have some sort of long colored ribbon sash or that pintucked ruching throughout the skirt of the dress. Those, particularly if you managed all three, definitely scream mid-2000s to me. Not that they were bad, just not for me. Of course, the kind of dress that I wanted then is all over the place now.
posted by ElleElle at 12:42 PM on October 5, 2015


So do we have the 2000s to blame for the awful rise of strapless dresses that look like they're going to fall off (or look like a big 1950s car hood above someone's bosom)?

I started seeing them become ubiquitous in the '90's around the same time I started hearing Vera Wang on Middle America's lips, so I always assumed there was some kind of connection there.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:57 PM on October 5, 2015


Wish they had bothered to dress the model in the period foundation garments for each period. The dresses look a bit deflated or shapeless without them.
posted by Gwynarra at 1:16 PM on October 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


Wish they had bothered to dress the model in the period foundation garments for each period. The dresses look a bit deflated or shapeless without them.

The ending is a nice touch.
posted by Gwynarra at 1:19 PM on October 5, 2015


I got married in 1998 and this video's 1990s dress is disturbingly accurate.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:07 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


« Older You used to call me on my cell phone ...   |   The birds that fear death Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments