DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22262#0089
The First Empire wedding dress. A study of rwo gowns from the collections of the National Museums
a wider population of women to be dressed in style: they could have more clothes,
appropriate for various occasions, and could afford refreshing their wardrobes from
time to time. The wedding gown no longer had to serve for a lifetime and gradu-
ally acąuired individual characteristics. The majority of women had at least one
white dress that could be used for wedding, and if a white dress was made especially
for this purpose, it could be worn for many years. Surprisingly, blue - the colour of
Virgin Mary - did not spread widely as the colour of wedding dress, although it was
ąuite popular in the eighteenth century29. Neither did groom's white suit, which
was a swanky thing among aristocrats, typically French fashion buffs, up to the end
of the eighteenth century30. The reason was the growing popularity of English fash-
ion in the early nineteenth century, which set the trend of dressing in dark colours.
In Poland, the tradition of white wedding dress seems to have established at the tura
of the eighteenth century31. The majority of diarists of that time reported that brides
were dressed in white, the preferred image of a bride. Any deviation was seen as as-
tounding. Later on, a wedding dress other than white could even out the bride's
virginity in doubt. On the day after her wedding, the woman necessarily put on
a dress of a different colour as a token of change in her life.
In conclusion, in certain cases we can safely identify dresses worn specifically for
a wedding ceremony during the Empire period. Most of them could only have some
of the features discussed above (the train about one metre long, white colour, light
cotton fabric or at least satin, symbolic decoration), which is why we can never be
certain of their original purpose. There are dresses in European collections that re-
semble the two Polish bridal gowns. The same features as above are found
in a French dress of unknown provenance (made ca. 1806) in the possession of the
Victoria & Albert Museum. Never before has it occurred to anyone that this particu-
lar dress might have anything to do with wedding32. However, the dress has
a typical shape: a high waistline; a Iow, almost sąuare, neckline trimmed with
a short, embroidered flounce; short sleeves; and a train about one metre long. It is
made of white cotton muślin embroidered all over in smali regular white patterns.
Both the edge and the front of the skirt are decorated with a band of grapevines and
29 Wedding Costume 1735-1970, Manchester, 1977; Clark, H., [Introduction to catalogue],
The Bride in her Time. Wedding Dresses from 1766 to 1945, Edinburg 1980.
30 Koźmian, K., Pamiętniki. Wrocław-Warszawa-Kraków-Gdańsk 1972, Vol. I, p. 234.
31 In the eighteenth-century England brides often dressed in white, silver and blue,
while in the Netherlands, starting from the early nineteenth century, they wore pastel
colours (Marriage, op. cit., pp. 13-30). Just like in Germany they took to the white
colour more commonly in the 1820s yet for another hundred years many women in
those countries chose - mostly for practical reasons - darker, sometimes even black,
dresses - something absolutely unthinkable in Poland.
32 Rothstein, N. (ed.), Four Hundred Years of Fashion (catalogue of the Victoria & Albert
Museum), London 1984, pp. 128-129, Cat. No. 29.
87
a wider population of women to be dressed in style: they could have more clothes,
appropriate for various occasions, and could afford refreshing their wardrobes from
time to time. The wedding gown no longer had to serve for a lifetime and gradu-
ally acąuired individual characteristics. The majority of women had at least one
white dress that could be used for wedding, and if a white dress was made especially
for this purpose, it could be worn for many years. Surprisingly, blue - the colour of
Virgin Mary - did not spread widely as the colour of wedding dress, although it was
ąuite popular in the eighteenth century29. Neither did groom's white suit, which
was a swanky thing among aristocrats, typically French fashion buffs, up to the end
of the eighteenth century30. The reason was the growing popularity of English fash-
ion in the early nineteenth century, which set the trend of dressing in dark colours.
In Poland, the tradition of white wedding dress seems to have established at the tura
of the eighteenth century31. The majority of diarists of that time reported that brides
were dressed in white, the preferred image of a bride. Any deviation was seen as as-
tounding. Later on, a wedding dress other than white could even out the bride's
virginity in doubt. On the day after her wedding, the woman necessarily put on
a dress of a different colour as a token of change in her life.
In conclusion, in certain cases we can safely identify dresses worn specifically for
a wedding ceremony during the Empire period. Most of them could only have some
of the features discussed above (the train about one metre long, white colour, light
cotton fabric or at least satin, symbolic decoration), which is why we can never be
certain of their original purpose. There are dresses in European collections that re-
semble the two Polish bridal gowns. The same features as above are found
in a French dress of unknown provenance (made ca. 1806) in the possession of the
Victoria & Albert Museum. Never before has it occurred to anyone that this particu-
lar dress might have anything to do with wedding32. However, the dress has
a typical shape: a high waistline; a Iow, almost sąuare, neckline trimmed with
a short, embroidered flounce; short sleeves; and a train about one metre long. It is
made of white cotton muślin embroidered all over in smali regular white patterns.
Both the edge and the front of the skirt are decorated with a band of grapevines and
29 Wedding Costume 1735-1970, Manchester, 1977; Clark, H., [Introduction to catalogue],
The Bride in her Time. Wedding Dresses from 1766 to 1945, Edinburg 1980.
30 Koźmian, K., Pamiętniki. Wrocław-Warszawa-Kraków-Gdańsk 1972, Vol. I, p. 234.
31 In the eighteenth-century England brides often dressed in white, silver and blue,
while in the Netherlands, starting from the early nineteenth century, they wore pastel
colours (Marriage, op. cit., pp. 13-30). Just like in Germany they took to the white
colour more commonly in the 1820s yet for another hundred years many women in
those countries chose - mostly for practical reasons - darker, sometimes even black,
dresses - something absolutely unthinkable in Poland.
32 Rothstein, N. (ed.), Four Hundred Years of Fashion (catalogue of the Victoria & Albert
Museum), London 1984, pp. 128-129, Cat. No. 29.
87