The Wedding Dress: 300 Years of Bridal Fashions - Tapa dura

This sumptuous book draws on wedding garments in the V&A's collection, photographs, letters, memoirs, newspaper accounts and genealogical research to explore the history of the wedding dress and the traditions that have developed around it from 1700 to the present day. It focuses on the white wedding dress which became fashionable in the early nineteenth century and is worn today by women across the world. The book considers the way couturiers and designers have challenged and refreshed the traditional white wedding dress and the influence of the wedding industry, whose antecedents lie in the commercialization of the wedding in Victorian Britain. The Wedding Dress is not only about costume, but also about the cultivation of the image of the bride. This book is a glorious tribute to an exquisite, stylish, glamorous gown, the romance of its evolution and the splendour of its design.

Edwina Ehrman is a Curator of Textiles and Fashion at the V&A and curator of the exhibition, The Wedding Dress: 300 Years of Bridal Fashions. She was a co-author of The London Look: Fashion from Street to Catwalk (2004) and a contributor to The Englishness of English Dress (2002).