This is something that comes up quite a lot when I'm talking to brides and designing their wedding dresses, and I think it's something that's worth talking about in relation to the whole wedding. Bridal magazines and blogs talk about trends quite a lot and there seem to be two camps of brides- brides who are really committed to a modern and trendy wedding, and brides who can't imagine anything worse. I think this trend-aversion is often inherited from mothers who got married in the 80s in huge, princess Diana sleeves. The theory I hear a lot, from brides and mothers of the bride, is that if you go "timeless" when you look back at the photos you won't have any regrets.
A 'trend', in it's purest form, is when a large group of people decide they don't like something and try to go about it in a different way. Designers soak up popular culture like a big sponge and produce work and then it sort of looks like other designers work and the media thinks "ah ha!! a TREND". Certainly, when I design I don't go hunting for what's tipped to be in, I think more about what Jenna Coleman was wearing on the last season of Victoria and the cute sleeve detail I saw there and turn it into something modern and fresh feeling. For example, I designed my bridal separates watching the scene of Much Ado About Nothing where they're all getting dressed and I loved the simplicity of the skirts and the way the tops went on like T-shirts.
One good example of how this happens is if you look at how wedding photography has changed over the last 10 years. In the early 00s, almost all wedding photography was the stiff, formal type we'd been seeing since photographs were invented. Then 'reportage' photography emerged, where photographers did minimal posing and portraits, and opted for a more organic snapshots and brides jumped on the opportunity not to have to spend 2 hours smiling awkwardly in a "the Three Mrs Smith" photo on their special day. Suddenly, every photographer was shooting in this candid style and it was the trendy, modern way of having your wedding photographed. This is slowly changing as brides want more posed bridal portraits for their social media and wedding albums, but that is a story for another day.
The problem really with trying for "timeless" is that it doesn't really exist. As I'm reminded every time 'the 100 years of bridal fashion' video pops up on my newsfeed, fashions change dramatically in about a 10 year cycle. So how do you navigate this quagmire of bridal trends?
My advice is this- make you wedding, and your wedding dress, as honest a reflection of you as individuals as you can. You don't know what's going to feel odd and old fashioned in a few years- I remember vehemently refusing to wear jeans that weren't low rise and being revolted by natural waist. I remember being revolted by skinnies. Then I remember thinking I would ONLY wear natural waist jeans for the rest of my life, and then boyfriend cut came in. All you can do is get to a place where you can look back at what you were wearing in the pictures and think, "oh my gosh, I loved those purple tights, I felt completely myself and so cool in them." Don't follow trends blindly, but lean into the ones you love and do them in a way that feels authentic and comfortable to you.
