Vera Wang, one of the most prestigious and ever anticipated bridal designers in the fashion world, has not disappointed us when it comes to her Fall 2015 collection of wedding dresses. Ever since opening her first bridal boutique in 1990 after acting as a fashion editor at Vogue, this designer powerhouse has given us collections of wedding dresses to fall in love with time and time again. One of her most signature wedding styles is her huge, overflowing skirts and grand organza ball gowns. Over the many years Vera Wang has been serving as one of the world’s leading bridal designers, she has been revered for her classic and elegant Park Avenue-style brides. Her bridal style was so loved and celebrated that the designer even had her very own Barbie doll debut in 1997. Ever since creating that first ball gown wedding dress, she has been continuously evolving that distinctly elegant style to create more modern, trendsetting gowns each season - this one being no different.
In this collection, along with the typical grand skirts, she also showed us freeing, ethereal gowns in light fabric with a delicate silhouette. This time the designer introduced something a bit more sensual and earthy along with her traditional elegance. The light, flowing fabric gathered around her brides in flattering sheaths of light tulle and subtle hints of transparency. These light, contemporary skirts were paired with skin tight bodices with cut out details for an edgy, new age feel. It was a new direction the designer took, a bold move and one that most definitely paid off.
Ever since her earlier collection of Spring 2015, the designer has been breathing youthful life into her wedding dresses. They no longer merely stand for a distinctive, classical bride but one more vibrant, bold and daring. This meant low cut necklines, tight bodices, flowing skirts with angular hems and even gold and champagne coloured gowns. Her coloured gowns were works of art, into which she poured intricate details and combined them with her now increasing style of angular cuts and low necklines. The mauve, champagne tones ran through the bodice of one dress, appearing in delicate lace, and led into a skirt fully covered in vibrant champagne tulle. There was a grand, other-world effect with the different complementing nude ones, which when paired with the modern, low cut bodice, made for a modern masterpiece.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Vera Wang if we didn’t catch at least a glimpse of bow work and detail on the gown. However, as is the now reoccurring theme within this year’s collection, she has put another modern, vibrant twist on her style. The wedding bow is the equivalent of Vera Wang putting her signature stamp on the wedding dress, and she has reinvented it for this season to include her earthy, daring trend. The bow detail sat on the back of the gown, in her transparent detail with the ability to both capture a light-hearted, free spirited bride, but also with a sense of drama. The arch of the back and the lengthy drape ran down the entire length of the gown to run into the ruffled skirt at the base of the dress. Another bow was placed on the front of one of her gowns for a more dramatic effect, with it being proportionally over-sized and a tangle of sheer, transparent ruffles. These bows were placed strategically, but on delicate portions of the gown where the most skin was showing. The bow work is probably the most distinct sign of Vera Wang taking her gowns in new, daring directions. They were transformed from a neat sheath of fabric at the base of the waist to sit atop naked shoulders and float down arched backs in sheaths of new fabric, modernised and free.
Throughout the entire collection, the dresses were overflowing with youth and vibrancy, with Vera Wang bringing the traditional ball gown back to life by infusing the silhouette with flowing, ethereal fabrics and enhancing its effect with laser cut outs and dips. These wedding dresses, with their many bows, vibrant tones and showing skin have been a project of reinventing the modern bride into a woman who knows what she wants to wear, and isn’t afraid to do so. Vera Wang has quite successfully freed any previous upheld traditions about how a bride should look and instead represents how she wants to look.
- Roisin Curran
Image Credits: Vera Wang