History Witnessed Wedding Dresses In The 1950s Fashion (2024)

Back in the mid 20th century, the world lived a rather fancy life. Be it welcoming a new child or starting with a new grade, everything called for preparation and celebration. No matter how significant or insignificant, people knew the art of making a deal out of it.

When it came to once-in-a-lifetime events like weddings, the masses did not attempt to hold back and limit their creativity at all. The brides, the grooms, the host families, the guests, the wedding planners, everyone threw in their maximum’s to make the weddings memorable and unique, if not grand. And if there’s something that we still admire from that insanely and vaguely creative era, then it’s the efforts put towards the wedding dresses.

History witnessed some of the most elaborate wedding dresses in the 1950s fashion. Let’s dive deeper and explore the details of the vintage sewing patterns.

Couture Dress

Haute Couture is a French terminology meaning high-end fashion. Back in the 1950s, a sudden fashion trend of fitting and customized wedding dresses hit the market.

The trend involved stitching of personalized, highest fitting wedding dresses by the best dressmakers. These dressmakers stitched the gown from start to the end by hand. Certainly, with so many resources invested, these Couture dresses were very expensive. However, not worrying about the budget was a part of the peculiar fashion trend.

Amazingly, this unique trend that extracted creativity from the dressmakers and led to the creation of exceptional wedding dresses has returned in the modern era.

Nowadays, the highest fashion dressmakers come to spend extensive time in crafting the most unique, most glamorous, and the most expensive wedding dresses of all times. Designers use various fabrics, patterns, and stitching techniques. However, the vintage 1950s touch still lingers behind.

With the trend being so versatile, you can get a specialized Couture dress conveniently.

Collared Gown

As the name suggests, the collared wedding dress comprised of a collar. Sometimes, it was the Bertha collar, sticking close to the neck. It was the royal kind, often paired with knee-length puffy white wedding gowns. With that said, the knee-lengths were not a popular choice amongst the 1950s brides. That’s because it got considered a teenager’s preference for gown length. Since the average age of females for first marriage back in the 1950s was about 20.3, clearly most brides contradicted with the idea.

Those who had a liking for the sophisticated Bertha collar either gave up on the length and fancy neckpieces or ended up pairing it with the foot-length gown. Other popular collar-style includes:

• Cape Collar
• Removable Peter Pan collar
• Swan Necked
• Peter Pan collar
• Swan necked Collar

The last one, namely the swan-necked collar, still happens to be a famous choice in wedding gowns.

Square neckline gown

Elizabeth Taylor was a famous fashion icon in the 1950s who brought the stunning square neckline gowns into wedding trends. The stylish wedding dress pattern reveals the neck and collarbone to add a touch of glamour into the simplest of gowns. However, it also signifies that the square neckline gowns are better worn in summer and spring.

With floral designs, the square neckline wedding dresses look classy and automatically draws attention to the outstanding dressing.

Bouff dresses

Bouff – A short for a bouffant. The bouffant gowns were a popular choice back in the 1900s. It refers to a women’s dress silhouette that comprises of a full, puffy skirt. If you still can’t picture it, then let me throw in a popular reference for you; do you remember Cinderella’s blue ball dress? That’s exactly how white wedding Bouff dressings looked like.

Not only did it feel all fairy and princess-like, but it also did wonders. The white puffy gown, resembling a hoop skirt made the bride stand out from the crowd. Often, to add more elegance and royalty to the dress, a trailing long fabric was also left at the back of the dress.

Perhaps, the Bouff dresses were themselves inspired by an even older fashion trend from the 1930s and 1940s. They peaked their popularity in the fifties and then somehow managed to get back to the dark corners of ignorance. But when Lady Diana wore a similar style in 1981, people could not help but fall in love with Bouff Dresses yet again.