BTW, I forgot to blog about it in the daily diary, but Oman's French Museum in Old Muscat just hosted a totally awesome collection of historical & haute couture bridal wear from France, and French Designers. http://main.omanobserver.om/node/29248 & http://gulfnews.com/mobile/life-style/beauty-fashion/trends-that-shaped-the-evolution-of-the-french-wedding-dress-1.726793
Thirty luxurious dresses from prestigious collections were exhibited to retrace the history of matrimonial fashion between 1810 and 2010, featuring the innovations of the most famous French designers including Jean-Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, Guy Laroche, Yves Saint Laurent, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Chanel, John Galliano, Karl Lagerfelt, Paco Rabanne, Marcel Rochas, Jeanne Lanvin, Jacques Fath and Christian Dior.
It's not there anymore, but it was totally worth checking out. I loved loved loved the chanel one, and I remember finding the Victorian era dresses in Vintage shops in my city, as well as the vintage parasols and gloves.
Right now I working on sewing some traditional Omani wedding dresses, two of them, and eventually I will post pictures of different regional bridal dresses and customs. A virtual gallery of my own.
I totally understand WHY alot of Omani girls, especially my Muscati ones, forgo the traditional Omani dress in favour of the white wedding dress, as I wore one for my wedding here in oman, and it weighed a tonne. After a few hours in the warquiya (heavily bejewelled shawl) my headaches, and the embroidery and beading on the bodice was too much to move other than ceremoniously. And despite the dress being designer, designer as much as one can get in Oman, it had tacky sequins on it in places. I mean, the dress was nice, but not all that.
So decided to make my own. That LOOK as nice the Hindi tailored ones, but are COMFORTABLE AND BREATHABLE AS THE WHITE DRESS.
I was saying to my Omani friend S, "This dress, the embroidery and beading looks gorgeous, but in the end it's cheap hand work, and highly uncomfortable. If the same embroidery and beading was done on the dress by Lassage using French couture techniques, it would be comfortable."
Second quote of the night. "And sequins! No one but Chanel and Armani REALLY do sequins with class."
OPNO is a bit of a snob, she will be the first to admit, when it comes to clothes.
A review of the exhibit:
"...The genesis of the exhibition occurred with the French Embassy's desire to commemorate through the medium of fashion — one of France's greatest cultural exports — the 40th anniversary of Sultan Qaboos Bin Saeed's reign in Oman.
It was thus decided that the wedding dress would be the theme, for the very nature of weddings and wedding dresses conjures up an atmosphere of gaiety and celebration....
The ground floor is thus largely dedicated to dresses from the 19th to the early 20th century while the floor above contains haute couture wedding fashion 1970 onwards.
One of the most striking aspects of the exhibition is that the wedding dresses do not exist in isolation. While the dresses are narratives in themselves, as in the actual dresses and fashion that dictated their appearance, the team also incorporated them into being part of a greater social narrative occurring over time. The decision to do so was in keeping with the exhibition's vision of playing with the idea of time. The specifically named rooms, such as the Cinema Room, indicates the impact moving images had on the world, allowing a moment to be relived, rather than be frozen in time, through the inclusion of a Lumiere brothers film reel.
Another room is dedicated to documenting the pictoral representation of wedding dresses over the past two centuries, etchings graduating to print and 20th-century glossy magazines. One also gets a glimpse of a doll that was used as a marketing and advertorial tool, with designers dressing it up in their creations and sending it to potential customers. The room reveals the preoccupation with the wedding dress, predicated upon the assumption that it would be the most important dress a woman would wear in her life, given the sanctity of the wedding ritual and marriage and the attention dedicated to it, albeit in changing media avatars over time."
Anyways, if you've never seen the French Museum (exhibits in french, arabic, and english) it open from Saturday to Wednesday from 10 am to 1 pm and from 5 pm to 8 pm and Thursdays from 10 am to 1 pm.
-Love OPNO (who loves many things, like fine French food, and haute couture---not the stupid niqab ban.)
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