Sheer Geometric Lace Wedding Dress with Daring thigh split

We’re bringing back the sun back with Louise’s wedding, which must’ve been on the hottest day of the year! (I was really pleased to be invited along for the evening celebrations!) Louise is totally cool, and I loved our natterings during our meetings!

Luckily, Louise’s dress was a daring sheer silk Georgette number, with equally daring thigh split, which meant that she could stay as cool as possible!
Louise works for The Clothes Show Live, so had lots of modern and cool influences, based around the idea of a dress worthy of a beach wedding - thinking kaftans, sheers, hippy crochets … even though the wedding was in Richmond, London. So we took all of the casual beachy elements and made a dress slightly more structured dress befitting of it’s environment.

As much as we both loved the idea of the sheerness of the dress, it may not have been wise to reveal too much, so the dress was strategically lined, and embroidered with lace.
I loved too, that Louise was daring enough to make a thigh high split in the skirt, although we took every precaution to make sure that nothing would be on show that shouldn’t.
The dress was cut with a long and slim raglan sleeve, which seems to be a little theme of mine at the moment … it’s just so flattering on the shoulder!
The back with a simple key-hole, fastening with a vintage AB pearlised glass bead, matching the bead buttons that close the cuffs.

The original idea that Louise had was to use a vintage table cloth to create the patterning on the dress, as most traditional laces were a little too floral for taste and style. Louise found some really cool table cloths made in Quaker lace which would have been perfect (they reminded my of Mary Katrantzou style shapes that could be sculpted around the body - Ming vase-style.) Unfortunately though, Louise had her heart set on a clean white wedding dress, and the cloths were a little peach-coloured with age. Instead though, I found two styles of lace that worked really well together, that were much more modern and geometric with swirls, arches and star shapes which I cut and embroidered and placed on the dress in order to compliment Louise’s figure.

Hope you enjoy!

Photographs by Saoirse Crean saoirsecrean.com