Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Wedding Dresses

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

In the UK, just over half of people above the age of 16 are married. Whether in a registry office, a place of worship or a remote beach somewhere sunny, each of these couples will have had to do some form of planning. Guest lists, cake, flowers and, of course, outfits.Today Betwixt the Sheets, Kate is speaking to Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell about wedding dresses. When might you have worn the same dress day to day? When did white become the norm in western countries? And what is a decoy bride?Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Joseph Knight. For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. My lovely bit twixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here with your fair do's warning to protect you from yourselves and to most importantly protect you from me. We're talking about wedding dresses, the history thereof,

who wore the best ones, who wore really crap ones, and where they came from. I don't think that's particularly upsetting, but it might be for you, in which case fair dues you have been worn. and I will probably be swearing quite a lot as well. I've long given up trying to rein myself in on that front, so we're just going to have to buckle up and go with it.

But I am ready if you are. Do do do do do do, do, etc, etc. That's the wedding march. Or is that supposed to be the wedding march? Okay, right, weddings. What's the really big deal about everyone's wedding today? The real star of the show, apart from the bride and groom, obviously.

It's the dress. The dress. Picture the scene. You're walking down the aisle. Everyone you know is there. They've all turned to look at you adoringly. They're gasping, they're sighing. There's probably a child squawking somewhere in the background.

But we're not even noticing them because you look like a princess. It's a big deal, right? For many people, it's the day, the outfit that they look forward to the most. Or at least that's what they say, isn't it? The happiest day of your life, allegedly. But the dress is a huge part of that now. The wedding dress itself is an entire industry and business. But when did the wedding dress become a thing?

It's like a guest all on its own. Where did this obsession with this one dress come from? And why was it white? What were people wearing before they were white? How is it different in the West to other parts of the world? Well, today, we're going to get our veils on and we are going to find out. Why do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the fire. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful done. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Shoots, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. Grace Kelly, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, Kate Middleton.

These women have all had wedding dresses. I'm emphasising that because their dresses were a big deal. Their dresses reflected their generation, and they changed the wedding dress game for other people. But what have been the most popular wedding dresses throughout history? Would have been trends and fads? What about the dresses of everyone else at the wedding? The bridesmaid, for example?

Well, today I am talking to Kimberly Christman Campbell, fashion historian, curator and author of The Way We Wed, because she is going to answer all of these questions and more. Enjoy. Welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Kimberly Christman Campbell. How are you? Good morning, Kate. How are you?

Or good evening, I suppose. I'm in Los Angeles. I know. I know. It still sounds so exotic to me does that. I think that's like a legacy from wartime Britain is just expected to be giving me chocolate and stockings and... Honestly, like anyone in L.A. Or if an American calls me ma'am, that does things to me as well. It's like, oh, cool. Thank you so much.

But I'm so thrilled to be talking to you because I love talking to all historians, all of them. But fashion historians are some of my favorites. It's just such a fascinating subject. My first question to you, before we get on to weddings and wedding dresses, how did you get into this area of study? What was it that made you get this is the one fashion history? Yeah, it's something I've always been fantastic. fascinated by, I didn't really know what to do with it, though. When I was younger, I thought maybe I

would be a fashion designer, maybe I want to be an art historian. It wasn't really until I got to university that I realized this was a job that I could do. And once I figured that out, I was on an unstoppable path, and I went to graduate school, and I got a job in a museum, and I realized this was not just a quirky hobby, but something that I could actually do for a living. And is it everything that you imagine that it would be? Absolutely, absolutely. And every day is different. I do a lot of writing. I do a lot of journalism. I've worked in museums. I've worked with collectors. I've worked with Hollywood. There's a lot of different ways to be a fashion historian. And I've tried a lot of them. Are you one of those historians that do you find yourself raging at TV and movie adaptations?

Because fashion is art, it's really immediate, isn't it? It's one thing to be a naval historian. And like maybe you're going to see a naval history film and then you can call it out. But fashion history, do you just sit there and just go, they didn't have that kind of lining on a bodice in the 17th century? I don't as much as I used to. I've realized that there's more to costuming than just recreating exactly what everyone wore in the past. So I try to appreciate the other aspects of it. One thing that does drive me crazy, though, is when I see paintings on the wall in a historical drama that are from the wrong era. You know, they post-date the actual setting of the film or the television show. And that makes me absolutely crazy. So one film I watched recently, well, rewatched, was Titanic. And I was reading up on how much money had been spent to get everything historically accurate

from like the place settings and the clock on the wall and the, like, everything. And then it just seems that when it came to hair, makeup and fashion, they went, nah. Well, it just tries to show you how much hair and makeup particularly are essential to recognizing somebody. I mean, no actress wants to be unrecognizable in a historical hairstyle. And that's been true throughout the history of Hollywood. But, you know, I have a friend who's an antitizzi or who fixates on the China in movies, and the China's from the wrong date or the setting is wrong. It drives him crazy.

My husband's a physicist. He ruins sci-fi movies for me all the time, but you can actually see laser beams in space and things like that. So we've all got something. We do. We do. I'm less problematic to go at the cinema with because historical sex scenes are not generally something that you can go on that much.

Oh, right. So we are here today to talk about. wedding's fashion and history, in particular, the wedding dress. And you have written a book about the history of the wedding dress and about wedding dresses all around the world. And when I knew I was talking to you today, it's suddenly, like, I think I always knew it in the back of my head, but I'd never really properly thought about it, is maybe there hasn't always been a wedding dress. But, you know, a lot of women, particularly women who are not wealthy and elite, wore their best dress for their wedding. And it didn't matter what color it was. It was just maybe a new dress,

but something they could wear again. And even women who did wear a white wedding dress in Victorian times were expected to wear that dress again for at least a year after they got married. And I think that's because they probably then got pregnant and couldn't fit into it anymore. But the white wedding dress was never meant to be a one-off. So they were supposed to wear their white wedding dress. So that would be like you just going down the supermarket for months afterwards

in your wedding dress, just pushing the trolley. Well, maybe not the supermarket, but you know the opera or somewhere like that. But you were absolutely expected to wear them again. Of course, this is what people forget about historic clothing, is that it was so much more expensive proportionally. They didn't have H&M. They didn't have fast fashion. Everything was natural fibers, everything was handmade, and clothing was very expensive compared to the way we think of it now. So you would never buy something to wear it only once. No. I always talk to my students about that. I'll try and get them to comprehend, because I teach a lot of 19th century history and literature,

of just how immersed in fashion, how easy and fast fashion. is today and that like how many items of clothing do you have? Can you even count? Do you even know? And that it wasn't even that long ago that working class people would really have had one item for the week and one for Sunday best. Because like you said, handmade. That's why we call it Sunday best because it was your other outfit that you could wear on Sundays or for formal occasions. And yes, that's very hard to wrap your head around today. But I always explain it as if we only could shop at Harvey Nichols. I mean, we'd all be wearing extremely high-quality. clothing, but most of us would have to wear it second hand or third hand or fourth hand.

And that's how it was in the past. And it was extremely sustainable. We think we invented sustainability. But the resale market of the 18th and 19th centuries was much more robust and well organized than anything we have today. They had rag men, didn't they? Was it rag and bone men? Like, people would come up down the street and you'd give them your old clothes and bits of rags and it would be recycled. Yes. And you would use your clothing until it was rags. You know, you would remake it for your children or for your friend. And then as it wore out, you would use smaller and smaller pieces of it. You would never throw it away. But that makes perfect sense then that the wedding dress, it would be a nice dress, but it really wouldn't be something, unless you

were mega rich, that it was just for that occasion. Certainly. And if you were a working woman, you would absolutely buy something that was not white, so you could wear it again and again. I was just about to say that. Like, just how impractical is white actually? Just it's a very difficult color to wear I tend to stay away from white as much as I can, not just for moral reasons. I'm a bit of a mucky pup. Where did that come from then, the white wedding dress? Because it's so impractical, really. It didn't come from Queen Victoria, but she's often credited with popularizing the white

wedding dress. I mean, white gowns in general were very elitist, obviously. You had to be able to keep them clean and take care of them. It wasn't very practical for being outside or for doing any kind of labor. but Queen Victoria, because her wedding was so high profile and so well publicized, she often gets credit for popularizing the white dress. Not the first to do it by any means, but definitely had a big impact in making that standard for what women wanted to wear or aspired to wear for their wedding, even if they didn't actually have the means to do it. And of course, white has many, many symbolic associations with purity, with race, with all sorts of different aspects of feminists.

that made it very appropriate and symbolic as a wedding color. In the West, of course. That's a whole different story if you're talking about the East or, you know, Japan, for example, where brides wear red and India and, you know, places where white is a morning color, not a wedding color. My book does go into global wedding traditions, but really as they relate to sort of this Western tradition of the white dress. But I really wanted to use the book to get away from the idea of white women and white dresses because that's what many wedding books are about. And wedding fashion is a whole system of clothing that affects grooms, guests, family members, mothers of the bride, mothers of the groom, they're all in there.

How pissed off would you be if you were one of the women that wore white before Victoria? And then this bitch comes along and gets all of the credit for your idea. You'd be raging, wouldn't you? There were white dresses in the 18th century. I mean, they go much farther back. So she, again, certainly wasn't the first. So I think in hindsight, we tend to credit her. But at the time, she was following fashion rather than setting it, of course.

So the white is a bit of a flex then. It's a bit of a, like, I can afford a dress. It was an odd choice because historically, royal women had worn silver for wedding gowns. She wanted to get married as a regular woman rather than as a queen. And there were many ways she did that. For example, she didn't wear a crown. She had a veil. She got rid of some of the trappings of royalty that would be traditional for a wedding.

She did wear a train over her gown, but she really wanted to buy into this sort of upper middle class wedding tradition rather than the royal tradition that had been long established for wearing silver and for wearing court dress and for wearing some of the other, you know, accoutrements of royalty. Do I know why she wanted to do that? Why she wanted to shake things up like that? I think there were several reasons, personal and political. Of course, she was very much in love with her husband and didn't want to overshadow him on his wedding day. but also she was very much upholding the English standards of femininity and of the family at the time. I'm going to ask you about some other people's wedding dresses, but before we get to that, what can you tell me about Queen Victoria's wedding dress? Because even though she was trying to downplay it a little bit, I'm going to guess that it was still quite fancy. It was quite fancy.

And one of the beautiful things about Queen before's wedding dresses is that she wore it as much as possible. She wore again and again. And she wore it on special occasions, like her children's weddings or christenings of her children's and grandchildren. She was buried in her wedding veil because it was such a sentimental thing as well as a treasure that she wanted to show off. I mean, lace especially was like jewelry in the 18th and 19th centuries. You would wear it with different outfits. It wasn't just sewn on and you left it there. It was something that migrated from your clothes to other clothes or could be reused as a christening gown for your children or things like that. Lace was extremely symbolic and extremely

precious. It was worth its weight in gold. And Queen Victoria particularly wanted to have English lace made for her wedding gown. So she decorated her gown with Honitin lace, and she used those flounces and those lace pieces again and again. Oh, my goodness. That's beautiful. Did I read somewhere that it took 200 women to make the lace on Queen Vicki's wedding dress? That sounds right. I mean, lace is certainly extremely labor intensive, and that's why it was so valuable, handmade lace. Once beginning to the late 19th century and people started making it by machine. Handmade lace continued to be very valued. But of course, by that time, everybody could afford to wear it. So it wasn't quite the fashion flex as it was.

I'm not surprised that she kept hold of then. If I had an item of clothing, it had taken 200 women to make, I think I would wear it every single day as well. Do we know what other dresses queens have worn before Queen Victoria to get married? As I said, traditionally court dress was worn for weddings. Marie Antoinette, we know wore a court dress for her wedding. What is a court dress? Court dress. In France, it would have been garment coffee grown a beat, which was a three-piece ensemble of a bodice, a huge skirt with a detachable train.

Laced down the back, the bodice was boned, it was worn with lace sleeves. It looked very different from fashionable dress, but it was something that you always saw queens and princesses wearing. Trains, of course, have a long tradition of being worn by royalty. And I talk about in the book how this idea of being a queen, Queen for a day is quite literal when you look at wedding fashion. Swedish brides to the day wear a crown, for example. A train is something that was associated with royalty. Things like lace and these very, very elaborate over-the-top gowns gave the average woman the look of a queen. Being a queen for a day,

apart from Queen Vicky, who didn't want to be a queen for a day, she just wanted to be one of these run-of-the-mill aristocrats who do anything. She just wanted to be a normal girl for her wedding day. Oh, she really did love him, didn't she? And of course, we think we invented this idea of the wedding week or the wedding weekend. That goes way back. And so we're not just talking about one wedding dress, but several worn for different events over the course of a week or a month or a several-day occasion. That's one thing I came back to again and again writing this book is that many of the things

that we think are very new and trendy, actually have long traditions, where a lot of the things that we think of as being very traditional, like the white wedding gown, aren't that old. You touched a little bit there on. Did you say that brides in Japan get married in red? Yes, yes. Red is a traditional wedding color. And I talked about the 12-layer kimono that we see on Japanese royal brides, even to this day. Red is a color of celebration, a color of wealth, a color of prosperity. So there are a lot of very ancient symbolic properties associated with it. What about in other cultures like India, for example, you touched on there, what would be sort of a historic dress in India? Well, it wouldn't be white because white is a morning color. But in India, of course, a wedding is a multi-day affair with many different ceremonies and many different dress codes.

When I wrote the book, I concluded by saying, we'd reach the peak of what you could get away with in a wedding. There was sort of a backlash against very elaborate weddings in America, certainly, after the 2008 recession. However, then Priyanka Chaffer and Jonas got married and I had to rewrite that section of the book. Because if you have an Indian wedding, you can go as far as you want with it. this. They really kind of rewrote the rules for not just a multi-seremony, but a multi-continent wedding over several months. And we all just ate it out, didn't we. I'll be back with Kimberley and wedding dresses after this short break. So at what point then, I assume that after Queen Victoria got married in her white wedding dress, that it wasn't the fashion immediately afterwards, how long

did it take for it to become established that you buy a special dress and then you keep your special dress and you don't wear it down the supermarket. Yes, again, that's a pretty recent phenomenon. I really trace it back to the influence of Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s when they're making these historical epics and suddenly women start wearing dresses that have nothing to do with contemporary fashion, but quote Victorian times or even earlier times. So they're looking to the past for inspiration rather than wearing something right off the runway. And you see this start to happen in the state, certainly, around the 1930s and 40s, you had things like Gone with the Wind and Little Women came out, and women are taking inspiration from history via film. When you do that, you can't wear

your dress to the opera or to a party because it doesn't look anything like what everyone else is wearing. You know, in the 1930s, there's some wonderful biased cut gowns that are perfectly in line with what was happening in fashion and they're just gorgeous. And then suddenly get to the 40s and everybody's looking like little bo-peep. God, that's so true. I'd never thought of that before. That's absolutely right, isn't it? Is that the wedding dress is a kind of a weird Victorian-ish type of garment.

I mean, not all of them, obviously. Vera Wang would have a thing or two to say about that. But generally this kind of like big Princess Diana affair is it does look like Victorian, doesn't it? That's right. And certainly, you know, the 80s, when Prince Steiner got married, historical styles were all the rage. Everyone was wearing Laura Ashley and the big puff sleeves, but you couldn't particularly wear that dress out anywhere

but a wedding, even though it was in line with what was happening in fashion. It was so over the top. It was such a one-off that you would not ever be able to wear it again. And I think there are a lot of reasons for this. I trace it back to the 40s, but I also talk about how wedding fashion does so much work emotionally to mitigate the inherent drama of joining two people, two families, sometimes two cultures. And I think one of the reasons women do look to the past for inspiration and wedding gowns and designers look to the past is because it situates the bride in this long tradition of other women getting married. And it takes you out of time and makes you part of history and suggests that this is an eternal bond and this is a lasting relationship. And

part of a very long tradition and history of marriage and family and continuity with the past and bolstering this event as something that's not just one day or one couple, but part of a much larger tradition. I love that. I love that, like, there's just a load of brides just heading towards the altar and think of the dress, think of the dress, think of the dress, think of the trip. But I know what you mean, though. Like, when you break down wedding customs, they're actually a little bit weird. We just kind of like wave them through now of just like, yeah, that's what you do. But like the wearing white because it's like virginal. And as you said, the Victorian wedding dress and that you turn up looking like little Bo Peep

and that your dad's got to give you away to another man and all of this stuff. It is weird when you actually stop and press pause on it. I think it's more than just patriarchy, though. I think it really does have to do with sending a message of timelessness and eternity and death do us part. All that really leans on tradition and the clothing really leans on tradition. You are sending a message. You're not getting up at the altar and making a speech. You're reciting the vows that have been used for centuries.

Yeah. Oh, that's very beautiful. I like that. That's much better than saying it's the patriarchy. So we spoke about Princess Diana very briefly then. And that dress was extra, wasn't it? That was a creation and a half. It's wonderful to look back.

back at it now because I think for a while people were really salty about it and thought this is just ridiculous. And I think now we can look back at it. It actually appreciate how beautiful it was and what a statement it was, what a moment it was. It was like Rihanna on the steps of the Met Gallagher. But before Instagram. So what are your other favorite wedding dresses throughout history? Oh gosh. My favorite one that I included in the book is Empress Soraya of Iran's wedding dress of 1953. It was a Dioratured dress. It was actually silver. It looked very white in the pictures, but it had silver running through it.

It had fur. It had a jacket. You could take off. And there was a strapless dress underneath. It had a huge train. I mean, it had it all. It wasn't actually fur. It was actually maribou, but it does photograph much like fur.

So I feel like that dress just did everything at once. That's probably my all-time favorite. I love looking at old pictures of people getting married. And you can see how the fashion changes. And that even when today people are trying to, you know, look retro, they don't quite look exactly like they did in the 1950s because that looks a bit weird now, doesn't it? But what customs about the wedding dress

that we retained today from throughout history that you think, yeah, keep that one. Let's not lose that one. Let's keep that. Well, you know, we talked about white. And of course, if you wear white today, nobody assumes it's because you're a virgin. But it does have the symbolic quality of signaling innocence and purity,

whether or not that's sexual. I think it survives for a reason. I love to see people wearing not white dress. There was a trend for blue dresses in the 1930s, and blue was associated with the Virgin Mary. So, again, it had this idea of purity and sort of a religious aspect to it, but it was also extremely glamorous. There was a trend for pink wedding dresses 10 or 15 years ago, and again, very feminine, but not white. So I love to see non-traditional colors in wedding dresses, but I don't think the white dress is ever going to go away. No, I kind of like it as well.

It's she classic, isn't it? And one thing that you learn pretty quick when you're around someone who's about to get married, is that there isn't just one shade of white. There's like an entire catalogue. There's cream, there's off cream, there's ivory, there's white. There's like the nuance between these shades is insane. Absolutely. And also, you know, the metallic, the gold and the silver gowns,

which we saw a lot of in the 20s and in royal tradition. Those are, I think, so gorgeous and so much fun. And they do have that symbolic quality as well, otherworldly and angelic and royal. And I would love to see more of those. have they always had that sort of bodice thing going on? I mean, I know the different variations of it, but kind of like your classic one is sort of big skirt.

Has it always, or has there been a period in history where it was kind of like everyone was just free-boabing it and it was just kind of loose and floating? Well, you know, that bodice and a big skirt, that is a very historical silhouette. And I think that's why we tend to associate it with wedding dresses because we do have this return to the past and return to history. The nostalgia and the tradition often comes through in those silhouettes.

Some of the 1920s gowns with no waste were actually extremely unflattering. I think as the photography of weddings becomes more important, we see changes there. The 70s, there are some wonderful sort of maxi-dress gowns that have no waist, and they're just very smocked and puffed sleeves and the Laura Ashley influence. And then, of course, in the 1930s, you get those extremely slinky, biased-cut satin gowns and just fling to the body and are just so devastatingly gorgeous. You'd need a pair of spanks for them, wouldn't you? Wow.

Tell me about bridesmaids dresses because I've been focusing so much on the bride that you sort of forget. The bridesmaid dress is a whole thing unto itself. And it's a different tradition in the UK than it is in the US. I lived in the UK for many years and looked at a lot of British as well as American weddings. And of course, the bridesmaids historically have been decoy brides.

And they dress like the brides. And so in Britain to this day, Bridesmaids were white often. That's interestingly come back to the U.S. That started to go away in the late 19th century. The illustrator Kate Greenaway, who did many children's books, sort of popularized these floral prints that became very popular for bridesmaid dresses. So you start seeing bridesmaids in florals while the bride is in white, although it may be the exact same dress or maybe some of the bridesmaids are in floral, but the maid of honor is in white. So as things started changing, you started getting a lot more pastels and bridesmaid dress. But I think because of the succession of royal weddings that have been so well publicized and so eagerly consumed by Americans, bridesmaids are wearing white again in America. The Kardashians have done this in some of their weddings. A lot of celebrities have had their bridesmaids in white. The rule has always been, oh, you never wear white to a wedding because only the bride is more white. But that's really changed just in the past 10 or 15 years in the U.S.

I loved that you called them decoy brides. That's amazing. I'm going to use that whenever must have to be a bride's made from now. Historically, what do the bridesmaid do? It just can't be that they're just there to get hammered and hold the bride's hair back when she's vomiting late and night. What's their symbolic role? Oh, well, that's changed over the centuries. I mean, the idea of a decoy bride is, you know,

in case the bride gets kidnapped or in case evil spirits want to mess with the bride. So this is a very ancient tradition that. I just know that. Take it with a grain of salt, like all ancient traditions. But this idea that you have not just one woman in white, but several goes way back. And, of course, the bridesmaids may be the friends or the relatives. They may be there for ritual purposes as well as just practical purposes. That's something that has shifted with the times, but has really remained constant.

There are a lot of jokes about bridesnade dresses. You may hate them, but you have to wear them anyway. There's fantastic lore around bridesmaid dresses. And, of course, in America as well, Bridesmaid's tradition. been adult women. There might be one young girl who's the flower girl, but in the UK, often the bridesmaids are all children. There isn't an adult bridesmaid or a suite of adult bridesmaids. So depending on the age of the bridesmaid, the clothing can be very different, of course. I'm going to remember all of this the next time I'm being a decoy bride. I've spent ages speaking

about bridesmaids and brides and the women. But has the groom, the groomsmen, the best man? Have they ever really had much interesting apart from just try and be smart and brushy teeth? Well, certainly recently, I think grooms have become more interesting. Due to sort of a complex brew of globalization and nationalism, I mean, people are taking more interest and more pride in their cultural heritage. So we're seeing things like men wearing not just kilt, but very elaborate, like handbox and celebrities have done this as well. wearing very formal yet idiosyncratic or ethnic clothing as a groom.

It's not just a black suit or a tuxedo anymore. It's become much more acceptable and more common to see men looking as interesting as the bride. And I think like many wedding traditions has been led by celebrities. I hate to say we all just do what celebrities do. I don't know if that's true. But when you are someone famous, it doesn't have to be an actor. you know, royalty, it could be a politician, when your wedding is photographed and publicized, that will have an effect.

And that's had an effect not just in what grooms are wearing, what brides are wearing, but in things like beach weddings or double weddings or same-sex weddings. Once celebrities do with that, it becomes much easier for everyone else to get on board. Is this sort of why Queen Elizabeth II? When she got married, it was the war, wasn't it? the Second World War and it was, I think I was reading about how, like, obviously they had to use rations and how did she balance that? Because obviously, that must have been a tricky one. Because during the war, everyone wants a bit of a pick-me-up and a royal wedding is, that's quite a good way

to do it. But also, you don't want to look too showy because there's people living out of their cellars and they've been bombed out and people don't have enough to eat. How did she manage to balance that one? Well, the time she got married, the war was over, but rationing was still in effect. And actually, loads of people sent her their clothing coupons once her engaged in because they wanted to help her get married. And she sent them all back and she said, no, no, no, you keep these. I'm good. Parliament had awarded her some extra dispensation for her wedding. Obviously, she had plenty of money to pay for a dress. And yes, but it was a balance of wanting to cheer people up, wanting to uphold the traditions of royal weddings, but also not wanting to rub it in people's

faces who didn't have very much. I have a whole chapter in the book on wartime weddings because it wasn't just her. There were so many people making these choices and decisions and coming with extremely creative solutions. I finished the book before the pandemic, but of course, once the pandemic hit, I started getting all kinds of reporters calling me wanting to know about what the pandemic was going to do to fashion, what was what to do to weddings. And I kept going back to World War II because the conditions were very similar where people couldn't necessarily get exactly what they wanted. They couldn't have big gatherings. They didn't have a lot of time to plan. It's all been done before in World War II. That was a really fascinating chapter for me. And there were

some wonderful examples of pandemic weddings that I just absolutely loved what they wore and why they wore it. Obviously, Princess Beatrice's wedding dress was a fascinating example of that where it was a very small wedding, but a very emotionally clever way of recycling and adapting a dress very much in line with the times and the attitudes that were going on during the pandemic. My sister got married during the pandemic during lockdown and we all had to sit there and watch her on Zoom and it was really weird because like you could see the whole family. Everyone was sat there in like their absolute finest with a glass of champagne but on their sofa.

I like waving each other. Hello. So yeah, it was, that was very strange. That was very strange. Drive-in weddings. There were a lot of outdoor weddings. A lot of very small ceremonies that were changed at the last minute or, you know, planned several times. Another favorite was David Harbor and Lily Allen's wedding in Las Vegas,

which looks just like a Las Vegas wedding any other time. You know, it was a small wedding chapel wedding. She wore an amazing Dior dress that was very retro-looking. And it looked like that wedding could have happened so any time in the past 70 years, really. It's strange that you said there that loads of people were phoned in Europe and going, what's going to happen to fashion through the pandemic? Because they were phoning me and going, how is this going to change sex? I don't know. I don't Leave me alone. So it's interesting, like, what the pandemic has done to this stuff. But rather than sort of ask you, how has the pandemic changed wedding fashion?

One thing that must have changed wedding fashion is the legalization of same-sex marriage. Yes, yes. They must have done. Like, if you've got two grooms getting married, two brides getting married, or two non-binary people getting married. How is that changing what people are wearing at the altar? That was fascinating to study because there's not really a single answer to that. Often it was two men or two women wearing matching outfits. Sometimes it was almost matching,

but they wore a different tie. Sometimes it was completely different. That was really fascinating to study, and I couldn't really come up with a blanket statement on this is how things have changed, because it's been so individual. And I think that's very appropriate because these couples are forging new ground. It's happening as we speak, isn't it? Is that they are rewriting the rules, and it'll be amazing to see what changes and what happens as a result of that. And do you stick with tradition, even though you are completely breaking tradition in a major way? Or do you do something completely new? And it's wonderful to observe that. But I don't think you can make hard and fast conclusions.

Possibly the more traditional than not, I mean, these weddings tend to look very much like heterosexual weddings. It's just you've got two brides or two grooms. I think we're still in the process of figuring out what that's going to look like. And if it needs to look like one thing, it doesn't. When my nieces and nephews were very small, one of their first weddings they got taken to with my brothers in the Navy and two of the guys that he worked with got married. So it was two sailors getting married to one another. And the kids who were very small, they were like four and five, got very confused and thought it was pirates getting married. So they just wore travel.

They went to see the pirates getting married. And I loved that. I was like, yes, gay pirate weddings. We need more of that. But my last question to you, what was your wedding dress choice? I got married in a Victorian hunting lodge in Scotland. So my dress took inspiration from the setting. It looked like something that you could wear in, you know, 1895 with a corset top and a train.

My husband, of course, wore a kilt. He grew up in Scotland. And that made it extra fun. I think any time you have kiltz at a wedding, it really ups everybody's game a bit. Me being American, you know, a lot of my American friends and relatives rented kiltz for the occasion, which was fun for everyone. I love that. I'm going to sneak in another question here. Now, as someone that studied the history of weddings and wedding dresses,

if someone's getting married and they come to you and they say, Kimberly, what is your tips for not ending up with a dated wedding picture? What would be your advice as to what to stick with? That's a great question. Often it's the hair and makeup that dates faster than the dresses. I would pay attention to that. I think a big question is always the shoes. I mean, shoes are something that you could conceivably wear again,

And even if you do have a very traditional white dress, maybe have a little fun with those and buy something special you'll enjoy wearing for many years. I had a very traditional dress that I have not worn again. But I often wonder, maybe I should have gone differently there. Maybe I should have done something that I could have worn again. A really gorgeous designer dress that maybe wasn't a traditional wedding dress, but was something that was very special in its own way. I don't think there's a right answer, but I would encourage people to think about things like

that and not go with what you think you're supposed to wear or what someone else wants you to wear, but really take advantage of your moment in the spotlight as a bride or as a groom, where's something that's going to communicate who you are, but also who you are as a couple. Kimberly, you have just been amazing to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you? I've got a website, Kimberlychriston-Camble.com, and I'm always on Twitter. My handle is at Hottie Kature. Oh, nice. Thanks, thank you so much for joining me, Betwixt the Sheets. You have been an absolute treat.

My pleasure, Kate. Thank you for listening, and thank you so much to Kimberly for joining me. And if you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you have something that you would like us to look into, you can now email us at Betwixt at HistoryHit.com. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit.