Vogue Weddings: Brides, Dresses, Designers

“Anyone with a fixation on weddings or brides surely will be satisfied . . .”

With the 120th anniversary of Vogue magazine comes a spate of titles commemorating and celebrating the publication on a variety of levels.

This latest one is all about weddings, but hardly the simple eloping type and much more about the grandest of gestures and the most elaborate of events that have taken place since 1920.

Mr. Bowles covers every possible dress from bridal gowns worn by Melania Knauss (Trump) to Carolyn Bessette (Kennedy). In other words we are offered from the simplest of pure lines to the most elaborate of “wedding cake” designs meaning from Narciso Rodriguez to John Galliano for Dior.

The gowns cover every conceivable style option one can ever imagine and then some that have never entered your mind. The photographs of the brides at their nuptials are both lush and intimate while giving the reader an unobstructed view of each creation.

While the focus of this coffee table book is most certainly the dress, we get to glimpse at the festivities, locales, and themes of some of the most famous and celebrated personalities from the world of fashion, entertainment and society.

You can rest assured that this is not about how to plan a wedding as seen in Ladies’ Home Journal; these are the weddings and brides that fill the fantasies of little girls and grown women the world over.

The book represents the glory of the event and not so much the ritual.

A fascinating feature of the book is that there are designers who have designed for their children, giving the reader the idealized vision of how a particular designer dressed their children for these life changing events.

The very last segment of the book is a very limited and somewhat strange selection of designers of wedding dresses. Within this small and tightly edited list is Jenna Lyons who you might know as the creative director and president of J. Crew. The point of singling her out is not her presence in the composite listing but her photograph—which is about the best photo this reviewer has ever seen of the style maven. The composition of the designer listing is in itself a fantasy but that’s what the book is all about!

The appeal of Vogue Weddings is not limited to brides and mother of the bride as we are shown the total outcome of each event. Be aware: The featured functions are most definitely of the crème de la crème and spare very little in terms of expense.

Anyone with a fixation on weddings or brides surely will be satisfied with the contents of this book.