(Re-)Making Royal Fashion History, Pt. 2

After reading our post yesterday about Butterick's new Kate Middleton-inspired wedding gown pattern (#B5731), our friend Laurie from Teacups in the Garden alerted us to two additional royal wedding gowns that have been commercially patterned.  The first is Grace Kelly's iconic 1956 gown for her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco.  The gown was designed by Helen Rose and made by the costume department at MGM, as a gift to the bride from her former studio.  It was reportedly made of 25 yards silk taffeta and almost 100 yards of silk tulle.  Valenciennes rose point lace decorated the bodice and sleeves, and the veil was trimmed with lovebirds in appliquéd lace and embellished with thousands of tiny seed pearls.

Grace Kelly's wedding gown.

Photo linked from fashionbride.wordpress.com.

Vogue has created a lovely Grace Kelly look-alike pattern (#V2979) that closely adheres to the details of the original and successfully captures its old time Hollywood glamour.  That this is a recent pattern release is unsurprising, considering the degree to which Kate Middleton's gown (and her overall sense of style) has been compared to Grace Kelly's.

Grace Kelly in her wedding gown (left), with the Vogue reproduction V2979 on the right.

Photo of Grace Kelly linked from Hollywooddame.com.

Vogue photo linked from Voguepatterns.mccall.com; follow the link to purchase the pattern.

The second pattern Laurie discovered is an old and (alas!) now out-of-print Burda pattern (#7940) for Princess Diana's wedding dress. I wish this was easier to find now because it would be such fun to try to recreate such a fairy tale gown, with the big poofy sleeves and all the lacy frills and bows.  This pattern seems to appear occasionally on ebay and etsy, so check those sites if you're looking for one.  If you'd like to read more about the original gown, visit our earlier post here.

Burda pattern envelope for Princess Diana's wedding dress.

Photo linked from a recent etsy listing.

A big thank you to Laurie for sending us these links and permitting us to share them with you!

And while we're still on the topic, just two final notes.  To complement your reproduction Kate Middleton wedding gown, a reproduction of the diamond Cartier tiara lent to her by the Queen is, of course, an absolute must (because who can resist a tiara?!). This is by far the closet reproduction I've been been able to find (and it's even affordable, too!): click here.  If you'd like to compare it to the original, check out the photos here.

And if you're interested in recreating Kate's sapphire blue Issa engagement dress to add to your royal wardrobe, a combination of Simplicity 2145 (quite obviously inspired by Kate's) and McCalls 5974 should do the trick.  Happy sewing and don't forget to let us see what you create!