More brides go for unbridled look
By Olivia Barker
USA Today
It's not the bride who's blushing these days. It's the rabbi. The minister. The family and friends seated before her.
That's because there's enough exposed cleavage, leg and back to turn the wedding aisle into a catwalk, or Vegas Strip show.
The demure bride of yore, the one in the fairy princess gown, has left the altar. Plenty of May brides will be donning dresses boasting navel-nudging necklines, derriere-skimming hemlines and backs that dip down to the tailbone.
With any pretense of purity permanently swept under the pew, "sexy bride" is no longer an oxymoron. Traditionalists, meanwhile, harrumph that the exhibitionism is tarnishing the institution of marriage itself.
Matrimonial mavens say the trend, well, took off four years ago, when Cindy Crawford said "I do" to Rande Gerber on the beach in a thigh-grazing slip dress. Since then, a thinly veiled industry has arisen to meet the needs of women who don't quite feel comfortable in buttoned-up (read: "virginal") white.
Gyms, spas and personal trainers are specializing in sculpting the bride-to-be. Among the magazines and books ab-anxious women are poring over: the just-published "Buff Brides" (Villard, $15.95), a wedding workout guide.
A major magazine, "Elegant Bride", has shed any shreds of pastel frou-frou and reinvented itself for this wedding season as the fashionista's guide, complete with spreads depicting smoky-eyed brides in filmy confections draped languidly over bare-chested men.
Sol Bride, a Denver-based boutique devoted to wedding-day lingerie, recently went national with a 40-plus-page catalog featuring Frederick's of Hollywood-style thongs and bustiers alongside the peignoir sets.
Fashion designers, who just wrapped up a week of bridal shows in New York, are leaving little to the imagination come the honeymoon.
Witness Reem Acra's lacy sarong and bikini combo. Or her corset tops. (She's leaving it up the customer to decide if they are for the wedding or wedding night.) Then there's her strapless, gold-flecked cream denim dress. "This is about being sexy but still sophisticated, which is very tricky," she says.
Indeed, there's a fine thread between alluring and absurd. Vera Wang, whose recent collections include a Twiggy-esque minidress and plunging mermaid gown, calls her creations "sensual, female, esoteric but never obviously sexy."
The look is proving so pervasive because both older and younger brides can pull it off.
"I think more women are capable of being sirens," says "Elegant Bride" editor in chief Deborah Moses. Older brides can "go into the dressing room and walk away from their childhood fantasy" of being Cinderella at the ball. Their fantasy has matured. "The wedding day is more like their Oscar day. It's a performance, and you are the star."
Meanwhile, body- and style-conscious younger brides, who've been shimmying into low-slung pants for so long, can't imagine strutting down the aisle in anything that looks like it requires a crown and magic wand.
"All these poufy dresses, which are very beautiful, the girls look like fairy godmothers in them," says Adrienne Bavar, 27, who does publicity for Acra. For her November wedding in Baltimore, Bavar slipped into a tight, 1920s film star-inspired frock. "I wanted to look as sexy as I could. It was like, `This is it. This is my time.' "
"It's sad. No one cares what the guy looks like," says "Buff Brides" author Sue Fleming. Paunch? No problem. "A cummerbund will just tuck that in." Brides, on the other hand, pay Fleming $65 to $100 an hour, up to four hours a week, for help toning shoulders and arms, particularly the "waving waddle of the triceps," she says.
One of her Manhattan clients, Jennifer Harris, even plans to tuck a 5- to 8-pound weight into her bouquet during her September nuptials. "As you're lifting it, your arms really do jack up," says Harris, 31, who works in publishing.
Decolletage at a backyard ceremony is one thing. Decolletage at church or temple is something else. Some religions require shoulders, even whole arms, covered. In other sanctuaries, officiants "don't like the idea but won't stop the bride from wearing what she wants," says New York wedding planner Claudia Hanlin.
It's a question of appropriateness. "I've had a few brides who say, `I want to show some cleavage,' " says Yvonne Impson, a bridal consultant with the House of Fashion in Sacramento. "So I pull down the neck of my blouse and show them my cleavage, and then they close their eyes and wither. The point is they don't realize their effect on others," like their grandmother. Nonetheless, the store offers a Monique Lhuillier gown they've dubbed "the J. Lo dress," which scoops down the back, below the waist.
Impson says she'll allow her clients to show swaths of skin "if they absolutely have to, but this is the time for other emotions to be engendered in your groom, like commitment. Lust is easy."
