For the longest time, wedding clothes were the stuff of dreams. While the stuff in one's own closet epitomized the ordinary, garments worn for the Big Day were exquisitely extraordinary. They were also tremendously expensive and destined to never be worn again.
That tradition is still extant but only for so long, as there's an upswell in upstart wedding fashion grounded in reality.
Fashion brands like Jacquemus and SKIMS are recontextualizing wedding clothes for a new generation, transforming once-stuffy uniforms into stylish dailywear and artful statement pieces suitable for more than one special occasion, pieces resplendent as any other designer clothes.
Because, as one headline recently noted, it's no longer about the wedding dress but the wedding wardrobe.
The aspiration is still there. The indulgence is intact. But weddings are no longer simply ceremony: they are, again, fashion.
There's an uptick in louche, increasingly casual wedding clothes appropriate for any night out, as opposed to only the night out.
It's a fresher spin on the staid wedding style of yesteryear, something that makes sense for young people who're either shunning marriage or retooling its traditions to meet their whims.
Society's current zeal for dressed-down wedding clothes reflects a greater undermining of formal norms, something that first began on Wall Street in the early post-pandemic days.
When no one is forced to wear a blazer to work (or able to afford a house), the act of wearing designer suiting and refined dresses becomes a small, personal indulgence akin to a sweet treat from Starbucks, a new Sonny Angel, or getting your nails done "engagement"-style, even if you have no bridal shower on the calendar.
Plus, it just ain't economical, let alone eco-friendly, to splurge on a spendy statement dress intended to be worn only one time.
Likewise, why get wed in a stuffy off-the-rack suit? Better to wear something actually worth wanting to wear (and wear again).
And so Jacquemus, master of not-so-formal eveningwear, proposes elegantly wearable wedding-appropriate clothes that could also be worn while lounging in the park. SSENSE sells seasonal capsules that propose Thom Browne shorts and puff-sleeved balletcore for wedding guests (and the guests of honor). Kim Kardashian's SKIMS cut its signature athleisure from silk and positioned it as a bridal collection.
Needless to say, today's wedding fashion goes beyond the veil.
Further, young people getting wed are starting to seek out personalized rings over classic engagement jewelry.
Rather than opt for a giant rock, there's heightened demand for more thoughtful baubles, like vintage rings and even jewelry designed by the partners themselves.
I can't authoritatively posit that waning interest in conventional engagement rings directly leads into the rising fixation on alternatives but I can point to declining ring sales as evidence that changes are a-brewin'.
These shifts are demonstrative of the younger generations' broader disdain with rigid corporate tradition, which dictates a wallet-bustin' ring and expensive wedding clothes that only get worn that one time.
Of course, it's not so much that these groups outright reject familiar structure as much as they reframe it as they see fit, weddings included.
In the same way that people reject gender norms, so too do they spurn the tiered gowns and tail-ridden tuxes that their parents (or parents' parents) wore.
They want real clothes, real jewelry, real things that can really be worn by real people, because as fantastic as wedding day may be, it's also just a day, the first day of the rest of their lives.
