By Harry Mottram: The features editor of the Western Daily Press asked if I could write a feature on wedding dresses by tomorrow lunchtime. No problem. I had it written within just over an hour entitled The Rise and Rise of Asian Fusion Wedding Style without having to Google any details. I knew my wedding gowns like some blokes know their makes of sports car or premiership footballers but having edited Beautiful Brides Magazine for ten years I could have gone on Master Mind to answer questions on the finer points of wedding dress design.
My ten years as editor of Beautiful Brides had come about by accident. Initially I took a job at Brunel Publishing owned by The Bristol Evening Post as the editor of several free publications that included what’s on guides, parenting magazines and even a horse riding monthly. However, the owners in their wisdom had decided to launch a free glossy called Elegance Today with no idea where the advertising was to come from, but the one part that worked was a section on bridal wear and Beautiful Brides was born.
The clue was in the title. It featured bridal fashion which despite perceptions does change from year to year and certainly from decade to decade – along with lingerie, hair styles, bridesmaids’ style and the bridal party in general. As a jobbing writer I quickly mugged up on a subject and soon new the difference between a mermaid and an Empire line gown.
From the start, despite it being a free glossy monthly magazine given away in supermarkets, bridal shops and high street retailers – it was a huge success – the thousands of copies disappeared in seconds – not just snapped up by brides to be but by people of all ages.
With the first issues showing so much promise I decided to introduce a fashion shoot at a local attraction or landmark to give it a West Country feel. The models were the svelte forms of fellow female journalists and admin staff at the newspaper offices we shared who were more than willing to slip into the wedding dresses provided by designers, fashion houses and bridal shops. Add to that make-up artists, hair stylists and providers of accessories keen for the publicity meant they could look the part. The photography was provided by professional photographers who did it for free for the publicity, or who advertised in the magazine and even the newspaper’s ‘snappers’ helped out as they enjoyed photographing glamourous women as a change from the traditional ‘grin and grip’ shots of MPs, Mayors and charity stunts.
I wrote under my own name but also (since I was the only member of editorial) as Sharon Diamond and Amanda Cornwallis. Sharon was more strapless backless and white stilettos while Amanda in my mind was more a sweet-heart neckline and discreet pearls kind of writer. When the phone rang for either of the mythical writers they were always ‘out to lunch’, on vacation in the South of France or ‘indisposed’. As a result, designers and product managers would say to me in exasperation on the phone, ‘isn’t there a woman I can speak do?!’ No. They had to speak to me – but I knew my stuff and when I visited trade shows I was greeted by traders as ‘one of them.’
And it wasn’t just bridal fashion, there was the bridal party, hair, make-up, venues, the men, hen and stag nights and one of my favourite subjects the role of what to wear at a public social event like a wedding. How style had changed with changing social norms was fascinating with Queen Victoria’s wedding to Albert setting the trend for white wedding dresses due to advent of fashion magazines and the industrial revolution able to mass produce off-the-peg white gowns. Before that most wedding dresses varied in colour from blue to brown and from cream to pastel colours. Most brides until the 19th century wore a best dress with some extra decorations such as new sleeves to ‘dress it up.’ Royalty and the very rich favoured metallic colours like silver and gold thread stitched into the dress along with precious stones, jewels and pearls to add decoration. For most men the order of the day was their ‘Sunday best’ until photos and images of Royal weddings showed frock coats, tailed jackets and the like.
One reader called me to say she had her 1947 wedding dress which she made herself out of purple taffeta. It was the age of rationing and so it was a highly precious piece of textile – so I borrowed it and set up a shoot with two members of staff to recreate the post war wedding photo. The reader who was now in her 90s said the reception was in her mother’s front room in Bedminster with tea and cake served to about 25 people – such a different time to today’s weddings when £25,000 is not unknown for a wedding once you take into account the venue, food, drink and honeymoon – let alone the dress. One thing that has changed is where you can marry and what to wear. I met one bride who wore a beautiful black mermaid gown – but then it was her fifth betrothal and she said she’d ‘done all the other colours.’
As for my family the idea that their dad was writing about ‘women’s things’ was something I know my sons found hard to cope with as in general men working in the female fashion industry are considered effeminate. But when they saw the models, they realised their dad was onto something. And on one shoot at Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station my wife Linda and daughter Milena took part with Milena also modelling at a shoot featuring a motorcycle outside the Old Vic Theatre. The main photo shows part of that shoot.
The fashion shoots were always outdoors in public places where passers by would take an interest – like the donkeys on Weston-super-Mare beach who ran away at the sight of two brides offering them sugar lumps. Or the war veterans in King Street in Bristol who stopped in their tracks on the way to a Remembrance Sunday ceremony to admire the models being photographed in little more than white corset gowns.
Sadly the management of the newspapers who shared the offices with me didn’t have the same interest in taking the subject seriously. They tried to ban one front cover as it featured a black bride, and they changed the name of the magazine and replaced me with a female journalist who used the position to get free holidays. The magazine quickly lost advertising and they were about to shut it when I was ushered back into the editor’s chair – and revived it for a while before I left for a job as a news journalist – but that’s another story.
Speaking of black brides, Bristol is a multicultural city so the models needed to reflect that – which is why I learnt about black hair and make-up – and could dash off a feature on The Rise and Rise of Asian Fusion Wedding Style without having to Google any details.
Rapscallion Magazine is an online publication and is edited by Harry Mottram and is published his own interest.
Harry is a freelance journalist. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc
Email:harryfmottram@gmail.com
Website:www.harrymottram.co.uk
You must be logged in to post a comment.