Australian wedding dresses join V&A exhibition

MEDIA RELEASE COURTESY: Bendigo Art Gallery

Australian designers Akira Isogawa, Material By Product, Romance was Born and Toni Maticevski are to contribute to the international exhibition The White Wedding Dress: 200 years of wedding fashions for its world premiere.

The focus on Australian contemporary designers, curated by Bendigo Art Gallery as an addition to the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition will feature significant designs to complement haute couture gowns from international designers such as Zandra Rhodes, Dior, Vivienne Westwood, Vera Wang, Christian Lacroix, Lanvin, Philip Treacy and Stephen Jone.

The exhibition draws on the V&A’s outstanding collection of wedding gowns from the early 1800s to the present day, exploring the history of the wedding dress using individual garments and their histories to illuminate the ways in which society has responded to economic, cultural and technological change.

Through exquisite gowns that have for many represented the single largest investment in clothing in a lifetime, the exhibition will consider why the white wedding dress became the garment of choice for fashionable brides in the early 1800s, how designers and couturiers have interpreted the tradition from the late 1800s through to the present day and public’s enduring fascination with society and celebrity weddings.

The exhibition encompasses historical bridal dresses, veils, corsetry, millinery, shoes and other accessories as well as gowns by couturiers and designers. Edwina Ehrman, Exhibition Curator, V&A said "This exhibition presents the most romantic, glamorous and extravagant wedding dresses from the V&A's superb collection and highlights the histories of the dresses, revealing fascinating details about the lives of the wearers and offering an insight into their circumstances and fashion choices".

Bendigo Art Gallery has curated an additional section for the exhibition highlighting wedding costume in Australia from colonial settlement to these chosen designers contemporary wedding fashion.

Director of Bendigo Art Gallery Karen Quinlan said “The history of wedding dress is an integral part of our understanding of fashion history and as we will witness in this extraordinary exhibition has been influenced by major events and social history over the past 200 years.”

After its display at Bendigo Art Gallery the exhibition will tour internationally, finally being shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The wedding dress exhibition is the first in a new series of annual exclusive international exhibitions at the Bendigo Art Gallery. Under the banner of Bendigo International Collections, the Bendigo Art Gallery will present in partnership with the Victorian Government a significant cultural exhibition each year which will not be seen anywhere else in Australia.

The White Wedding Dress:
Two Hundred Years of Wedding Fashions
Exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
1 August – 6 November 2011

For more information see the Bendigo Art Gallery website

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