99% Invisible - Wedding Dresses: Articles of Interest #12

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

A wedding was once seen as a start of young adulthood. Now, a wedding has come to represent a crowning achievement -- a symbol that your whole life is together and you have accrued the time and space and resources to afford your ascent to another level of fulfillment. And there's no greater symbol for this day, and all the pressure it brings, than a white dress. Articles of Interest is a limited-run podcast series about fashion, housed inside the design and architecture podcast 99% Invisible. Launched in 2018 by Avery Trufelman, the show encourages people to rethink the way we look at what we wear and what it says about us.

Before you came into the world of radio, what were you doing? I was working on wacky daytime talk shows, late night talk shows, YouTube talk shows, a bunch of just random things. My colleague at 99% invisible, Vivian Le. On the 2013 reboot of the Arsenio Hall show, I was a production assistant and my current fiance was also production assistant and we've been together for five years. So last year Vivian had to plan her wedding, which was kind of like her old job as a production assistant. Except that in this production, she's the star and the wardrobe department. I've been looking at wedding dresses since me and

Cody got together. Five years ago. Yeah, like I've always looking at wedding dresses since me and Cody got together. Five years ago. Yeah, I've always been thinking about what kind of dress do I want. So I think that's probably why it's so hard for me to decide now, because it's something that I've been thinking about for so long. It's a really big decision. So I'm not really looking forward to picking out the dress, because it seems so stressful. I mean, on the surface, it's just a dress.

A dress that is white. But you like buying clothes normally, no? I like, oh, this is really bad. I am a, I'm like a bargain shopper. I am a Maxineista. Like TJ Maxx? Why is that bad? Because I buy a lot of clothes that you would not think

highly of after doing articles of interest that are very cheap. I could like, you know, buy a ton of them and like, oh, whatever, it's just like $5 for the shirt. So I'm that kind of shopper. I think of like, what kind of value can I get for this? And I feel like a wedding dress is never equated with value. Most people I think spend more than $1,000 on their wedding dress.

And that sounds insane to me. I would rather not spend more than like eight hundred dollars on a wedding dress. Eight hundred dollars to me is a lot, but if you like... That is a lot. It's a lot of money. So when are you going wedding dress shopping? Oh, I'm putting it off so much and I don't want to do it. And it has nothing to do with me not wanting to get married. It's that it's so much pressure

to spend so much money on this one item of clothing that I know I'm only gonna use once. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. Articles of interest, a show about what we wear. Season 2. People don't realize it's fantasy. It's always this thing that you have to work extra hard to get. Mmm, that's so good. No one dresses like a king anymore. How do you make money?

That's how we make money, love. There are lots of things that we take for granted that would once have been considered luxuries. A wedding should be pretty simple and straightforward. It's just about you and the person you're marrying and the ones you love and it should just be that. At least, this is Vivian's fantasy. I don't want to spend so much time getting ready

for my wedding. I just kind of want it to be a much time getting ready for my wedding. I just kind of want it to be a nice dinner with my friends and family. We want like a five minute ceremony, like so people don't have to sit through reasons why we love each other, because whatever. You can understand why maybe lots of couples would at least be tempted to escape from that burden. Dr. Benjamin Carney is a professor of social psychology at UCLA and the co-director of their marriage lab. He has talked to a lot of couples. Almost every couple I've ever talked to

has said in planning their wedding, we strongly consider trucking it all in a loping. Most couples don't do it. Most couples have their wedding and some couples do, and they lope. That has some benefits. You save the expense. You save the money.

And you can spend it on yourselves. You don't have to worry about your family's interacting. I would say it also has some costs. Because what you don't get is the public display of couplehood. And that is what a public wedding is all about. Letting other people invest in your partnership. A wedding does something to the couple. It also does something to the guests.

If I attend a wedding, I was there at the, you know, the institutional beginning of your relationship. And that means I'm kind of responsible for you. That's a heavy thing. It's not just a party. And that pressure quickly changed all of Vivian's wedding plans, which had started simply enough. So I'm getting married in Italy, in the summer.

This was last summer, by the way. And it was just supposed to be a small destination wedding, family-only. But two Americans can't legally get married in another country. So Vivian decided on a courthouse wedding in LA and invited her friends. But then her fiance's family on the east coast got wind of that. Cody's family was like, okay, we'll throw you a party and we're like, okay, great, yeah. So we checked back in with them. There's 150 people coming and they run to

out this beautiful hall with a view of Manhattan in the background. So now we're having three weddings, yes. Three different weddings with three completely different locations. And I know a few couples who have done this, who've had a handful of ceremonies to accommodate everyone they love. And of course, this affects the dress, because you will wear different outfits to a courthouse or a church or a beach or Disney World.

It depends on the weather, it depends on how big the space is or how formal or informal it is. And this dizzying array of options is a byproduct of a wealthy post-industrial civilization. For the lion's share of history, brides just got married in whatever they had that was nice and clean. They might have one fancy dress for their wedding, and then they might wear that same dress again for all the other weddings they attended as a guest. And this dress often wasn't white. A very deep purple velvet, and it's very richly embellished with gold metal thread embroidery. Curator Heidi Rabin showed me a purple velvet

caftan covered in gold embroidery, depicting flowers and trees. It was a wedding dress from the 19th century Ottoman Empire. This garment is called Abindali. And this is a garment that was very typical for a Turkish and Ottoman Turkish Jewish woman. It was considered part of her dowry. So when she would get married, this was a very valuable piece of clothing that she wore at the wedding, but also at the ceremonies leading up to the wedding, and then also for any very important parts of her life thereafter. Imagine you'd be getting married in your Bindali surrounded by all your friends in their Bindalis that they were married in. It must have been quite powerful. It would be like being accepted into a coven.

Or like a robing ceremony for an academic or a judge. Yeah, I think that's about welcoming someone into a community. Heidi is the senior curator at the contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Last year they hosted a show called Vailed Meanings, which displayed some wedding dresses from across the Jewish diaspora, which displayed some wedding dresses from across the Jewish diaspora, which is to say, from across the world, primarily from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

And a lot of these wedding clothes from this huge cross section of the globe were worn multiple times, or at least twice. This garment was actually a burial shroud. Heidi shook me this caftain-like tunic made of linen. And the burial shroud would be worn during the wedding from both men and women, and it was a way of reminding people that this very important moment in their lives of their mortality. So, on the two most significant days of your adult existence, you'd be wearing the same

thing. This was common in several different parts of the world in the Jewish faith in particular. Of course, now, each wedding dress is a decidedly one-time thing, and it's not a community dress. The bride wears white, and usually she's the only one wearing white. It is all about her one dress on this one day.

And sure enough, the exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, like a lot of fashion runway shows, and like this podcast series, ends with a big white wedding dress, as a finale. To reflect on this trend of wedding dresses being white. Note how Heidi called it a trend. Yes, white has been a marker of maidenhood and virginity for centuries, but the white wedding dress trend began when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840.

She wore white. And 14 years later, in 1854, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert staged a reenactment of their wedding so they could be photographed. Images of Queen Victoria's white dress circulated throughout the colonies in a way few images could. Her empire extended very long and very wide, and so the trend of wedding dresses beginning to be white, starting with her, really pervaded all over the world following that moment. It's a simple origin story, and simultaneously a massive and complicated one. Through imperialism, a look became a trend and became a tradition.

It has to be white, or it doesn't have to be white. Vivian didn't particularly care about the color of her dress. I'm okay with it not being white, but I feel like it's going to raise some eyebrows from my older generations, my in-laws. I think when they see their kids getting married, they wanna see the white gown, and then they wanna share that moment. Because as much as people will say,

it's the brides day. The day also belongs to everyone in the brides life, and there's only one dress. It has to represent tradition, but also be something unique and totally you. I always say, what do you like in your closet now? Elizabeth Thigh is a wedding dress designer. She says most of her clients start out thinking

they have no idea what they want in a wedding dress. But she says they can just look at what they already wear. But shape is it, but it feels like, just start with your relationship with clothing now. This is not a NASA space suit. This is not like a highly technical item of a peril. Like, you know how to do this. You may think you don't, but you know how.

You have bought clothes, you have dressed yourself for years. But how can that translate to a wedding dress? Like, how could you, how could I be like? Every, you're wearing a V-neck. It's, this top looks like it might be vintage, is it? Yes. Okay, so, think about that. Is that a neckline that you like?

Do you like a loud print? Do you like the 60s? How do you like to feel? Do you like to wear a sleeve? Do you feel more comfortable in a sleeve? All of those things. I mean, clothing boils down to silhouette, textile, details. That's pretty much it.

So shape, fabric, bits and pieces. So just think about what you gravitate towards in terms of shape, fabric, and bits and pieces. So sure, in some ways a wet ingress can be like other clothes you already have, but technically speaking, a wet ingress is like nothing else we have in our closets. I know I've never had anything tailored to my body. The vast majority of us now wear clothes with lycra in them and nets. And so things don't have to fit.

They just have to stretch. So most of us are just not accustomed to wearing something that fits close to the body, like that is touching us, and that doesn't stretch. A wedding dress is a throwback to how clothing used to feel. It really brings up all of the traditional draping techniques and the internal corset and the fundamentals of couture design come into play in wedding dresses in a way that they don't with most other clothing.

In a lot of ways, the typical wedding is a trip back to the times of Queen Victoria, overtly, if you're wearing white, but also in the very process of learning about this antiquated kind of clothing. I mean, having something called a gown rather than a dress or one, I mean, you know, it's a one and only gown, unless you get married again and then you get another gown. Most of us are not gown wearing very often. As Rebecca Meade wrote in her book, One Perfect Day, the process of wedding planning has become an Eliza

do little lake education. I went to these kind of wedding planning seminars where you would have experts instructing the brides to be on, make sure you practice walking backwards in your dress because if you don't, you're going to trip over the train and fall over and break your neck. And I mean, these are literally the things that were taught to Victorian maidens in finishing schools before they found their husbands. And this sort of education goes beyond the dress into the different kinds of cutlery and flower arrangements and varieties

of buttercream and fondant, learning correct posture and how to walk. There's something incredibly retro, really, isn't that? And that's the whole point. We look back in time for reassurance, to understand that hundreds of thousands of people before us did it just this way. Tradition is like a good luck charm. It's a huge thing to get married. I mean, it's very understandable that we want our personal choices to feel like they have some cultural value that extends beyond us.

And the challenge of a wedding from the dress to the menu, everything, it's about finding that balance between tradition and individuality. So not only are you navigating your desires with the desires of everyone around you, you are also considering the desires

of everyone who came before you. We want to be individual at the same time. We don't want to be out there on our own. And this balancing act, Rebecca Meade says, has its own significance. Only a few generations ago, getting married was a massive, arguably traumatic life change. In one day, you would go from being a kid living in your parents' house to becoming a spouse of someone who you maybe didn't know that well And now when a lot of couples already live together and know all there is to know about each other

We replicate that change that major feeling of transition in the act of planning the wedding the wedding Process substitutes for the shock that once you would have had, you know, going from being a single person to being a married person, and I think it's in a way it becomes a kind of useful thing to go through because you feel like it really, you know, there is something different happening to you. You have gone through the process of planning this thing. You've learned about floral arrangements and venue rentals. You've gone through low-stakes simulations of trials and tribulations.

And in this way, the ordeal of finding a wedding gown is particularly symbolic. You know, there's so much hope and promise that's caught up in the buying of the dress. I mean, the gown has a totemic quality, doesn't it? You know, you fall in love with the dress as a way of falling in love with your spouse or replicating that experience of falling in love.

And this is the one, you know, you've found the one just like you found the one to marry. I was so ready to follow my colleague Vivian to a local dress salon to watch that process unfold, where she would try on gown after gown, dancing and shimmying, and every look, while I sat on the couch giving my thumbs up or thumbs down, until Vivian comes out of the dressing room

with an ethereal glow on her face. And everything seems to slow down. We don't have to say a word. We just know she's found the right one. The sales attendants clasp their hands over their mouths. And suddenly I'm crying. And Vivian is crying. We're all crying.

And in this moment, we all truly understand the gravity of what Vivian is about to do. And we burst out in applause. But I don't have this moment on tape. It didn't happen. No, because I bought a dress, literally like probably two days after we talked. Inspired by our interview? A little bit. Like I think after we talked, I kind of wanted to get it done. So I went online, I just googled around. Vivian showed me a picture of a long white off the shoulder dress, very sleek. No lace or embellishment at all.

It's not poofy at all. It's just kind of a sleek material. So how much was your dress? If I can ask. Yeah, no, you can tell. I can tell you. It was $100. No. Yeah tell you. It was $100. No.

Yeah. What? It was $100. Is it nice? It's nice. It's not see-through. It might catch on fire in the sunlight. I haven't tried it on in sunlight yet.

But I like it. And in a weird way, Viv is following Elizabeth's advice. She picked out a wedding dress, the same way she picks out the other clothes in her wardrobe. She found a bargain. The Maxinee's didn't mean what's again. And it's very much in Vivian's minimal sleek style. But it's also clearly a wedding dress.

It's white, and it's not something Viv could just wear a second time without significant alterations. I think this is definitely the kind of cut and fit that if I wanted to die it and wear it to something else, I totally couldn't do that. It turns out this is a common fantasy about wedding dresses. I get asked quite often, could I just shorten this dress later if I want to wear it again, or could I die it?

Elizabeth die, the wedding dress designer. My last name is die. So if you want to die a wedding dress and you Google dye wedding dress, I come right up. And the answer to the question of, should you dye your wedding dress? Is no. Don't dye your wedding dress. The chances of you ruining it are like 95%. Even if you send it out to get it dyed professionally, it's tough.

Because most garments are made of more than one textile, and they all take dyes differently, and often it comes out unevenly. Dye can also shrink garments. Just generally, it's a rough thing to put your dress through. I'm glad you told me that... now. Before I threw it in a bucket with some like... the color...

Oh yeah, no. I have done that before with shorts. It was a pair of jorts that I turned into green jorts for anime expo, because I was cosplay. Who are you? I've got a lot of skeletons in my closet. So if you can't die and re-wear your dress, lots of brides are opting to do something unprecedented in the long history of wedding dresses.

They will take this gown that they spent countless hours fretting over and toss it. So, I've been making wedding dresses for a little over 15 years, which is crazy. It's literally a new generation getting married now. There's now sort of a new generation who grew up with fast fashion and just a really different relationship with clothes. There's much more of a, I just want to look killer on Instagram and then I'll piece out. There's actually a whole trend of theatrically destroying the dress after the wedding. Like the bride will jump in the ocean in the dress or get it covered in sand or set it

on fire in order to take pictures of it. Trash the dress. Yes. That's what the trend is called. Yes. I would say that the trash the dress thing is in keeping with sort of this new idea of just like pure moment. And then if you want to extend the moment, extend the moment by just destroying the thing

and making sure to get like incredible photos of that, and then you're done. There's something kind of poetic about finding beauty in this destruction. Trash the dress is kind of like an anti-saromone in some ways. But I don't know, maybe instead of submerging it in an ocean or setting it on fire or attempting to die at green, maybe the dress itself can function like a photograph. Maybe it's worth keeping a wedding dress in your closet to remind you of that one day that you worked so hard for. I guess I could give it away, but I had some sentimental value to me. Alice in Cherneau has held on to her wedding dress for 30 years. I don't have much else left over from the wedding,

you know, other than the album and all that's been to. Ha ha ha. Alison is my mom. She has the album full of photos, the videos, the wedding ring, and what's more, me and my sister. There's a lot of evidence that she got married to my dad, but to her, the dress is different somehow.

So I can look at this, I can look at even looking at the photos, I sort of start thinking about the friends or the people who've died since the bed of my wedding, things like that. But this is the only object that really makes me think about the actual event and the ceremony. I can then remember how I felt in the dress and how I felt that day. I did feel really beautiful. I felt like that was my day and people stood up when I walked on the aisle in that dress

and you felt very special. It was a moment. I'm kind of an awe of people who decide to get married. Becoming legally bound to someone else seems so recklessly optimistic it's almost rebellious. And not just because there's a 40% chance it won't work out. Through the bubonic plague and the Great Depression and the coronavirus, people have found ways to get married, to have whatever version of a wedding they can, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.

Weddings are easy to lampoon, I don't need to go through the reasons why. But at the heart of this cliche is something vulnerable, and at the heart of all this luxury is something necessary. It's about having something to reach for, having something to feel excited about. It actually is a special day. Like I was kind of avoiding coming in terms with that it's a special day that people want to be happy for you. The wedding dress became an afterthought after having experienced, you know, being around family and getting to live these three very distinct weddings. Vivian had her weddings. The Italian getaway with the sleek off the shoulder dress. And it was perfect. The courthouse and Los Angeles. I got like a 40-buck dress. So that was fine. And the big family gathering in New York. Thin-strapped, floor-length, lacy.

And I've seen a million girls with, you know, the same exact wedding dress, and it didn't bother me. And then suddenly, all that energy and anxiety that went into the dresses went away. It was like Cinderella's carriage turning back into a pumpkin. The dresses are just dresses. I could let it go, I feel like.

Yeah? Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I think we keep too much stuff. You know, like I don't wanna end up hoarding all these clothes. Really? You'd be okay with not having any. I haven't felt the need to take out the wedding dresses

and like look at them and like feel them again or put them on again. Also it just happened. It just happened. It could, yeah, 10 years from now I might want to have one. Or even 30 years from now. I don't even know if it would fit. It's so funny to try on.

You want to try it? Yeah, I'll try it on. Yeah. Because clothes are records of the bodies we've lived in. We are like snakes who shed our skins and acquire new ones as we age. Oh, I remember this. The waist is so narrow. But sometimes it's nice in the churn of our clothes

to let something last. I'm just kidding, dude. No. Because the way you change and grow might be unexpected. Because your shoulders are bright. My shoulders got big. I got rough. But in this case, when I tried on my mom's blood and dress, I don't think it'll button. And couldn't get it off. I shouldn't have done this. I'm sorry. I had to rip the dress she'd been saving for three decades. But the just go for it. Okay. But the bright side of this was that with a newly ripped open scene.

Yeah, she's pretty good. My mom's wedding dress could actually fit her again. Oh, hey! Aha, see? I'm glad I kept it. She hadn't worn it in years. And there, with her two grown-up daughters watching. Wait, where's Dad? An address that wasn't quite her size or her style anymore.

She walked through her home. Check it out. And all eyes were on her. Look at the birds. Again. Unbelievable. unbelievable There's a portrait painted on the things we love Bring cold on this plane A feather like an engine that's here The language's no way There's a picture printed on the things we love

A pocket, a piece of paper, Words run yesterday There's a portrait painted on the things that we love. Articles of Interest was written and performed by Avery Truffleman, edited by Chris Brube with additional edits by Emmett Fitzgerald and Joe Rosenberg, scored by Ray Royal and Sean Raell with additional music by Jason Ja, fact checked by Tom Colligan with additional fact checking by Graham Haysha, mix and tech production by Sharif Yusef with additional fact-checking by Graham Haysha. Mix and Tech production by Shereef Yusef with additional mixing by Catherine Raimondo. Our opening and closing songs are by the mighty Sasami. Her self-titled album is so beautiful and she's a single out called MESS. Check her out.

Insight, support, and edits from the whole 99PI team, including Vivian Leish, Henrialle, Abby Madon, Kurt Colstead, Delaney Hall, and Katie Mingle. And Roman Mars is the best man of this whole series. And that's it. That was articles of interest in its entirety because it is with a heavy heart and much, much gratitude. But I'm leaving 99% invisible. It's been nearly seven incredible years since Roman Mars took a chance on an intern fresh out of college and kickstarted my career. Literally his kickstarter campaign got me hired.

And 99% invisible hasn't just shaped the way I make radio. It's changed my philosophy on the built environment and the things people make and use. So thank you, thank you, thank you for filling my world with wonder. Thank you specifically to Chris Brube, Katie Mingle, Kurt Colstad, John Rial, Delaney Hall, Sharif Yusef, Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Leigh, Joe Rosenberg, and most of all, Roman Mars. I am so lucky to have learned from all of your brilliance.

I am so lucky to have learned from all of your brilliance. And thank you, dear listener, for coming along for the ride. It's truly a luxury to be heard.