Dr. Katherine Jellison, Professor and Chair of History at Ohio University, was quoted in a racked article on “A Cultural History of Ugly Bridesmaids Dresses.”
According to the 1865 nuptial guidebook The Etiquette of Courtship and Matrimony, bridesmaid dresses should “be as the depth of colouring in the background of a sun-lit picture.” “The principal duty of the brides-maid is to look pretty, and not out-shine the bride,” advised Rose Cleveland in The Social Mirror, her 1888 “Complete Treatise on the Laws, Rules and Usages that Govern Our Most Refined Homes and Social Circles.” A 1920 issue of Vogue agreed that bridesmaids should look “charming, yet not too charming; distinctive, yet not too prominent.”
Despite the precision of these specifications, there was a time — not so long ago, even! — when most bridesmaid dresses, for most people, would have been re-worn out of economic necessity. A single-use dress (distinctive, yet not too prominent as it may be) might have been “fine for wealthy people,” Katherine Jellison, Professor of Sociology at Ohio University and author of It’s Our Day: America’s Love Affair with the White Wedding, wrote me, “but it only moved down into the middle and working class when folks on those rungs of the economic ladder acquired more disposable income” — likely not until after World War II. Today, says Kelsey Doorey, CEO and Founder of Vow to be Chic, which rents designer bridesmaid dresses, 86% of bridesmaid dresses (average price: $234) are worn exactly once.
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