designing my wedding dress
on collaborating, craft, and owning your taste.
I almost don’t know how to start talking about the process of designing my wedding dress, because it feels so deeply personal and a little bit vulnerable – it’s a big moment when your taste is going to be fully on display and then cemented in time. I guess it starts with a sketch I doodled, when I started dreaming up what kind of dress I was looking for. But to be honest, I really didn’t think designing and having your wedding dress made was even a remote possibility.
So when last summer friends starting asking me what kind of dress I was looking for, I would timidly say “Oh I don’t know, I think I want to design it myself??? Can people do that?” My friend Machel met that timidity with the strong positive force I so deeply value in her – she said I absolutely could and she knew someone who had, and she’d put me in touch.
When that mutual friend was too busy to take on my dress, she put me in touch with another mutual friend, and that led me to the genius of Jeffrey Hart.
What can I even say about Jeffrey. From our first little zoom call he took in his studio last August, bubbly, kind, listening to everything I said, I knew this was going to be the person. I said I’d drawn a sketch, he said send it. I said I kind of wanted the fit to be like an old vintage costume dress I had in my closet, he said bring it. I said I wanted the sleeves and drape to be like Sammy’s grandmother Rose’s dress, he said show me the pictures. And then he took it all beyond my wildest dreams.
When I first went to his studio, I brought the old dress, my sketches, a sleeve I actually liked from another dress even, and we just spent the afternoon trying on some bodice and skirt examples he already had. Jeffrey suggested a boned bodice to give the dress the shape we were looking for, and a few months later once I saw his craftsmanship on that, I felt it couldn’t be any other way. It was truly molded to my body (Jeffrey, to this day I don’t understand how you did that!)
For the material, I wanted something both watery and airy, with a vintage but classic feel, so Jeffrey suggested a silk chiffon over a silk double face satin. Jeffrey did the most amazing thing ever, and would send me home each fitting with a small swatch of the fabric we were circling so I could feel it in my hands and look at it after the fact. Material and feel is so important to me, and while I’m sure he did it for his own sanity (so I wouldn’t have to be constantly texting him asking what we’d decided upon and question it) it was a beautiful way to start having an experience and memory of my dress in process. (All those small precious pieces are tucked away in a box in my dresser, along with the French orange blossom soap I wore on our wedding day).
The skirt, oh my god Jeffrey also made magic with this skirt – full but drippy and swoopy and light but also cascading out of my hands while I held it up to walk. And while it felt so vintage-y, there was this sensual aspect that when the wind blew, the skirt would hug my legs and hint at their shape.
I have to say, (and whether this was a good idea or not I don’t know but it worked for me) I did not show a single person my dress in process. I actually felt that the collaboration occurring between Jeffrey and myself was really precious, and I didn’t want anyone else’s opinion. I knew what I wanted, I deeply trusted Jeffrey, and trusted that what was being made would embody all of that.
And on the day of my wedding, showing my family and Sammy a dress that was simple but crafted down to every stitch, was profoundly beautiful. I felt entirely me in it. Jeffrey Hart, that feeling was because of you. Thank you thank you thank you thank you. But know that I will never ever able to thank you enough.
I wore Sammy’s mom’s veil that I attached to a part of my aunt’s old headpiece. I kept it on my head through half of dinner I loved wearing it so much – felt beyond important to have a piece of material that had fluttered in the wind on the day she married Steve.
Lastly, I had Sammy write an inscription and then I stitched it onto a piece of dress fabric, with blue thread I found in his grandma Rose’s house after she passed last November. Jeffrey sewed the little piece in the back of my dress on our last fitting.
So oh god, this is my taste cemented I guess.
more soon,
ella p.
