How to Read a Wedding Dress: A Guide to Changing Bridal Fashion from the 18th to the 21st Century

Lavishly illustrated in full color, How to Read a Wedding Dress displays annotated images of historical garments that outline important features and highlight how styles have developed over time, offering a fascinating overview of changing bridal trends over three centuries.

In this ideal companion to her bestselling guide, How to Read a Dress, Lydia Edwards offers a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of bridal wear around the world, from the Renaissance up to the modern day. This guide explores prevalent trends and developments, including how the Victorian fashion for white silk (a break from the previous 18th-century tradition of the bride simply donning a ’best’ dress) over the course of the 19th century developed into the now familiar and indeed ubiquitous cultural icon of the white wedding dress and veil. Finally, she explores how today, brides worldwide are reimagining the past and incorporating ’vintage’ style as an integral part of their big day and considers style choices influenced by gender identity fluidity and same-sex marriage.

Equipping the reader with eclectic examples of bridal wear over the centuries, this is the ultimate guide to the wedding dress for students, researchers of fashion history, and anyone looking for inspiration for their big day.

Lydia Edwards is a fashion historian and Lecturer at Edith Cowan University and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth, Australia. She gained her PhD from the University of Bristol and has taught at the universities of St Andrews, Dundee, and Western Australia (UWA). She is the author of the companion books, How to Read a Suit (Bloomsbury 2020) and How to Read a Dress (Bloomsbury 2017 and 2021).