Miss Whitaker's wedding dress
These links take you to other dresses from Something old, Something new:
- Victorian dress
- Mrs Redhead's dress
- The Hinckley dress
- India dress
- Cash's costume
- Wedding ensemble
- Undocumented dress
- Whitakers dress
- Mrs Taylor's dress
- Maureen Jones' dress
- Susan Firth's dress
- Rita Brierley's dress
- Joan Schofield's dress
- Christine Connor's dress
- Bride's and bridesmaid's dresses
- Christine Thomas' dress
- Diane Price's dress
- Joan McGreevy's dress
This dress shows the new influence of cinema, particularly from Hollywood, on wedding dress fashion.
This dress was donated by Miss B. L. Walker, one of the main donors to the costume collection, and is dated as c.1934. It is recorded as Miss Whitaker’s wedding dress and was possibly made by Whitaker’s department store, although no records have yet been found to confirm this.
Dresses of the mid-1930s were subject to two main influences. Firstly, the glamour of Hollywood, particularly the popularity of historical epics which prompted romantic styles that were often intricately cut on the bias.
The second influence was the wedding dress worn by Princess Marina of Greece for her marriage to the Duke of Kent in 1934. Miss Whitaker’s dress is very glamorous and its “medieval” style shows that both of these influences were active in its creation.
This cream silk satin dress is extremely tight fitting, made for a slender bride it is cut to emphasise her figure. The huge swathe of fabric that makes the integral train is finished with a padded gathered roll of fabric that is echoed on the shoulders.
The dress is unadorned apart from the metal tie at the back of the bodice. This would have had a light gold colour at the time it was worn but it has since tarnished to a bronze-brown. The favoured materials of this period were satins in silk and rayon that had a high sheen and a fluid, slippery look.
Clothes shopping in Bolton
The first department store in Bolton was Whitaker’s which opened in 1907. It was developed on the model of the big department stores in main cities, such as Kendal Milne in Manchester, and this indicates confidence that there was a local middle class market to buy fine clothing and other products.
The next department store to open in the town was the Co-op store in 1928. But by this time – after the First World War and moving into the period of the depression – the local clothing market had changed. In a report for the Board of Trade in 1932 a new trend had been recognised in Lancashire: industrial production had finally overtaken the financial benefit of home dressmaking. In the words of the Report:
Actually, factory-made dresses can often be sold in the shops for less than the cost of the cloth being bought in the retail stores. This has brought ready-made frocks within the reach of the majority of women and has compelled numbers of local dressmakers to go out of business.
The flood of cheap goods had changed the market. In the depression economy of the early 1930s the small local dressmakers and drapers were losing out to the stores selling readymade clothing for everyday wear.
The small dressmakers and bespoke costumiers had to specialise to survive and focussing on wedding dresses was one way to do this. In the mid-1920s the most important bespoke wedding dressmaker in Bolton, Mrs A. C. Heaton, began trading from 44 Bark Street. By specialising in high quality bespoke clothing she was able to buck the trend for small clothing businesses, and her business grew from strength to strength.
