New and glamorous styles for season's brides - Beauty & Style

Ebony, June, 2003 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

TODAY'S bridal belles are breaking old traditions and making up new ones. Here comes the bride, all dressed in ... Suede? Red? Blush? Orange? It's a new day and many African-American brides are choosing their own unique styles to say "I Do." No longer inhibited by color, fabric or design mandates--white dresses are no longer de rigueur, even for teenage brides--bridal gowns are colorful, sassy and sexy, and most of today's brides from age 18 to 80 wouldn't be caught dead at the altar with covered shoulders. Gone are the demure necklines of the past; gone for the most part are sleeves of any kind. Most bridal gowns this season are revealing, strapless styles showing off the back, neck and plunging decolletage.

Skirts, too, are cut to emphasize the hips with split fronts ... and backs, according to popular wedding gown designer Vera Wang. This season wedding designers have updated the A-line skirt with a slight flair at the hem, creating the movement and flair of a trumpet skirt. And for African-American brides who want to proudly incorporate their heritage into their wedding, a Black bridal gown designer has written a new book destined to become the Black brides bible. The Afrocentric Bride: A Style Guide by Therez Fleetwood offers African-American brides elegant ethnic gowns. She reveals how to create an ethnic gown by using fabrics imported from Africa, or taking a traditional gown and adorning it with cowrie shells, embroidering or quilting it.

"I wrote the book because there has not been a lot of information on ethnic wedding dresses," she says. She says Black brides want the same thing in a wedding gown as any bride--"sophisticated styling with feminine details."

This season bridal collections feature modern and youthful dresses in body-skimming designs. Traces of lace in most collections are light and combinations and layers of lace hint at skin without making the elders blush. And today's brides aren't shy about showing skin. Bodices of different shapes and proportions are creating or accentuating sexy curves. "Strapless is in at any time of year," says bridal consultant Gizelle Vernon, who, with her mother, Sandra Vernon, co-own Sandra's Bridal in Olympia Fields, Ill., a Chicago suburb. "Today's bridal gown manufacturers don't even do a lot of dresses with sleeves," says Sandra Vernon. "If a bride wants sleeves, we really have to search."

Color is also the big surprise for 2003, the experts say. "Ecru, platinum, dusty rose, yellow and even pale green are popular shades," says designer and author Fleetwood. Gizelle Vernon agrees. "Today's bride is wearing what her personality dictates," she says. "We just had a bride order a deep ruby-red color ball gown-style wedding dress. It also had the corseted-style bodice and one of our popular details--the lace-up back."

The basic dress silhouettes to choose from include the empire style, which has a fitted bodice with a high waistline. The sheath--probably the most contemporary bridal gown--is simply a long column of fabric that gives a sleek look. The ball gown--the most traditional silhouette in the bridal industry--flatters a number of body types. The A-Line/Princess-style dress--the most popular design for wedding dresses because it flatters most body types, and traditional African attire that features an ankle-length wrap skirt, a loose blouse and a shawl with a matching gele or head wrap.

Fabrics are also in demand this wedding season. "Brides are getting dramatic with fabrics like silk shantung and Japanese fabrics, so it is the fabric itself that makes the dress so beautiful," Sandra Vernon says.

Fleetwood agrees that texture is in the forefront for 2003's brides. "Knits, suedes and brocades are very popular this season for brides," she adds.

Wang, popular bridal designer to the stars, says, "sophisticated blends of satin duchesse, gossamer layers of net and tulle, and varied hues of grosgrain ribbons achieve a refined femininity without sacrificing modernity." She adds that pleated tulle bodices, multilayered hemlines, gathers and shirring, belts and sashes "in every manner of fabric and texture" are adding interesting details to modern wedding gowns.

This wedding season feminine and flirty bridal dresses are designed to be viewed from every angle, top to bottom, back to front as they wow and surprise not only the groom, but the wedding guests as well.