Derek used to be Bernard’s partner – business and sexual. They set up Penrose together over ten years ago now. But they split up after some God Almighty row about something very small and now Derek runs a rival planners to ours over in Soho. Banks & Co are often pitching against us for clients, much to Bernard’s annoyance. Although I think it is a battle he secretly relishes.
‘Don’t you remember at Posh and Becks’ wedding? One of David’s relatives was caught popping the silver drinking goblets and tea lights into their Tesco’s bag?’ continues Bernard.
‘No,’ I say. ‘But I remember hearing that half the guests couldn’t work out whether it was a marriage or a piss-take. The Bishop of Cork in an Irish castle with a woodland-scene cake, and Victoria with hair and make-up and lighting all ready for her behind the stage – everyone was very confused.’
‘Mmm,’ agrees Bernard. ‘I think we can do a little better than that, don’t you?’
‘I bloody hope so,’ I reply.
‘Let’s fucking drink to that,’ he replies, draining his champagne glass. He gets up from the table.
‘Where are you going?’
‘My puppy-training, of course.’ He smiles. ‘Where I go every Monday night.’
‘But Sophie is ten years old!’
‘One lives in hope,’ says Bernard. ‘Anyway, the trainer is a total sex god.’
Tuesday a.m.
ALICE HAS CALLED me six times already this morning and it is not even ten a.m. Our appointment at Annabel Rogers is at ten thirty and she can hardly contain herself. Her wedding is on Saturday and this is the final fitting for the dress. They are cutting it a bit fine, if the truth be told, but Alice’s been away at some health farm in Austria in a last-ditch attempt to lose some pounds, and the shop seemed to be quite confident of the fit. Not that Alice needed to lose any more weight. She’s been starving herself for months and, I think, is in danger of going over to the other side. Personally I like a girl with some curves. There is nothing attractive about those lollipop actresses with large heads and stick bodies who look like they haven’t had a square meal in a decade. I remember a dietician once saying to me, ‘Ever wonder why Victoria Beckham doesn’t smile? Because she is bloody starving!’
Anyway, Alice keeps checking I am on my way and that I have got her shoes. For some reason, Anello and Davide had them delivered to our office, after they had been dyed just a shade more cream to match the dress. I had a quick look at them this morning, all wrapped in tissue in their box, and they are beautiful. They have a small heel, which is wisely low, bearing in mind how long the day is and how much she will be standing, socializing or dancing. They are pointed at the front and have a small diamanté buckle on the side. Her feet are a tiny size four and the shoes look so sweet and virginal. It is kind of hard even for someone as well practised as I am not to get emotional as the big day approaches.
It is a beautiful, sunny morning as I walk up a pretty Mayfair side street looking for the Annabel Rogers shop. She is not a designer I am familiar with, she was Alice’s call, and I am quite interested to see the place as we might recommend her to other brides.
The bridal dress market is an entire industry in itself. It ranges from the sublime to the monstrous to the rip-off. With prices and ranges to suit all pockets, you can spend as little as £60 on a wedding dress from Asda, or £20,000 on a couture frock from Versace. The first will be 100 per cent polyester with a net underskirt and ruched front; the second white satin with hand-embroidered gold roses. The workmanship is entirely different but they both get the job done.
It is in the middle market where things start getting complicated. Most of the dresses you can buy off the rack in boutiques and department stores these days are made in China. One of the reasons you have to order them so far in advance is because they have to get the orders back and forth. If you go to any of the bridal fairs from Earls Court to Harrogate you can see the same dress design offered up in fifty different places. Obviously these days it is all about cutting costs, which is why most of the wedding dresses you see going down the aisle in the UK are Chinese. They have marginally smaller mark-ups than most other bridal wear, being priced at five times the cost price, in comparison to seven or ten times cost price for British dresses. (The normal fashion retail mark-up is three times cost price.) So a £150 wedding dress made in China will sell at around £800 in the boutique. But should you want any last-minute alterations or beading, the Chinese dress is problematic. If you send the dress back to China then you can’t be sure it will be returned in time, and the quality of the beading is not as good as it is here in the UK or Europe. For some that wouldn’t matter, but for Alice it was not an option.
From her name and where she is situated, I am presuming that Annabel Rogers is one of the many bridal-wear designers who market themselves as couture but are anything but. There is a certain group of designers, including Vera Wang, Catherine Walker, Philippa Lepley, Vivienne Westwood, Jasper Conran, Ian Stuart and Jenny Packam, who all make dresses that are altered for you, but they are not couture, in the strict sense of the word. Their designs are not unique to you, and there is not a dummy at the back of the shop that has been padded up to your exact measurements. What usually happens is that a dress is designed and made up in various different sizes for the bride to try on. While she is in the dress, they tweak it to fit. So they might put together a size 14 top and a size 12 bottom half, or size 10 skirt and a size 8 bodice, and then it is stitched and re-fitted on the bride. Having said that, there are some designers who are so inflexible they won’t actually dress a larger bride. I know of one very well-known designer in particular who won’t have anyone larger than a size 10 wearing her clothes, because she doesn’t want curvy girls being seen in her dresses. Fortunately, there are others who are more accommodating.
I know that Sarah’s dress last Saturday cost £2,500 plus another £500 for alterations. But she shed so many pounds in the last few weeks before the wedding that the beading had to come off, and the dress was altered from the inside at least twice. That’s one of the great catches when buying a bridal frock – you need to ask whether alterations are included, as they can add at least another 20 per cent to the price. Then again, I always think bridal wear is expensive anyway. Make anything in white and you may as well put a nought on the end of it. I remember Sarah being quite a canny bride. She refused to pay £75 for some hair clip and bought the same thing in a shop around the corner for £7. She also had a bit of a fight with the designer about a shrug for the church. Her mum was very keen for her to have her arms covered during the service, but Sarah didn’t want the thing at all. The shop wanted to charge £200 for the shrug, which Sarah refused to pay, saying she was only going to wear it for forty-five minutes. Eventually they threw it in for free. But it took some negotiating on our part.
And these shops really can make quite a lot of money. One destination bridal place I know in North London gets about forty brides a month coming through their doors, spending anything from £3,000 to £8,000 on a dress, so you can see they are turning over some serious money. They can probably afford to give away a shrug or two.
I spot Alice tumbling out of a taxi at the other end of the street. The strawberry-blonde hair is distinctive even at this distance. She is followed by her mother, who is dressed to come up to town, and who has had her darker copper-coloured hair set nice and hard for the occasion. Alice is wearing jeans and a white shirt, with flat navy shoes, while her mother is sporting a floral wrap-around dress. She shouts and waves down the street as she spots me walking towards her.
‘Hi there!’ she yells. ‘Have you got my shoes?’
‘Yes!’
‘Do they look OK?’
‘Perfect.’
‘This is my mum, Louise, by the way,’ she says, pointing. Her mother cracks a stiff smile as I approach. Her dark-pink lipstick is bleeding into the lines on her top lip. ‘Mum,’ Alice continues, ‘this is the boy who’s done everything! Isn’t he fabulous?’ She s
queezes me very tightly and kisses me on my cheek, just clipping my lips with hers. She is too busy chattering away and opening up her shoebox to notice what she’s just done. But I can feel my cheeks flush with the wet warmth of her kiss.
Sometimes it is hard not to fall a tiny bit in love with the bride. For a start, she gets better looking every time you see her. Once the gym classes kick in and she starts having all those treatments that brides think they should have, the transformation can be extraordinary. As I follow Alice’s backside into the shop, she looks fantastic. Happiness is also, of course, one of the world’s greatest aphrodisiacs. And no one is happier than a bride-to-be. Except Kathryn, of course, who can’t stop bloody crying. But apart from her, brides are usually quite upbeat.
No sooner have we crossed the threshold of the shop than a stocking-footed assistant shoots out from behind a clothes rack and tells us to stop right where we are.
‘This is a shoes-off shop,’ she declares, looking down at our feet. ‘No shoes in here at all.’
‘Oh,’ bristles Louise, ‘but we are not just here to browse, we are here to collect.’
‘We have a shoes-off policy,’ insists the assistant. ‘No exceptions. And anyone who wishes to handle the dresses must wear these gloves.’ She hands us each a pair of white cotton gloves, the sort that are used to handle the fragile pages of rare books. My big man hands are obviously far too porky for them, so I hand them straight back. This puts the assistant in a spin. She looks from me to the gloves and then the dresses.
‘I promise I won’t touch anything,’ I say. ‘Anyway my hands are clean.’ I hold them up for inspection.
‘But these are wedding dresses!’ she exclaims, like that was supposed to mean something.
‘Good,’ I say.
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No, we thought we’d just come here for fun!’ I joke. It falls very flat indeed.
‘You must have an appointment,’ she reiterates.
‘We’re here for a final fitting,’ says Alice. ‘I am Alice Oxford.’
‘And is this the groom?’ asks the assistant. ‘Because it is very bad luck for the groom to see the bride in the dress.’
‘No, I’m the planner.’
‘Oh, right,’ she says, slightly taken aback. ‘Come this way, please.’ She smiles at me. I am now clearly part of her gang.
At the back of the shop there is a large white room with a long rack down the right-hand wall, packed with dresses covered in plastic. Some look like samples, others look like frocks that are awaiting collection. There’s a long white-velvet buttoned chaise longue next to the rack and a couple more large white-velvet armchairs to sit in. Scattered around the room are various white-satin shoes in various sizes and at various heights. Over towards the long sash window is a white table with a large glass vase of white peonies. Just to the left of that is a large triple-view mirror, and above is a shelf of net veils and a small collection of tiaras. The floor is covered in a thick cream carpet and the room is redolent with the cloying smell of rose air freshener.
‘I’ll just go and tell Andrea that you are here,’ says the assistant.
‘I thought her name was Annabel?’ I say.
‘Annabel doesn’t design full-time, she oversees from her house in the country.’
‘Oh,’ says Alice’s mother, sounding a little put out.
‘When you buy Vera Wang you don’t get measured by Vera, now do you? The dresses get sent to the States and back,’ she replies. ‘It’s the same here.’
‘So Annabel makes the dresses in the country?’ asks Louise.
‘She oversees.’ The assistant smiles. ‘I’ll go and tell Andrea you’re here.’
Less than a minute later, a large woman with an even larger bosom that almost enters the room ahead of her arrives. She has a tape measure around her neck, a pin cushion strapped to the back of her left wrist and a mouthful of pink and white marshmallows.
‘Morning,’ she mumbles. ‘Sorry – I was just finishing my breakfast. Anyway, how are we all today? How’s the bride?’
‘Fine,’ grins Alice. ‘I’m Alice, we met last time. You measured me.’
‘Yes, yes,’ replies Andrea. ‘Has the bride brought her shoes along? And is she in the right bridal underwear? Exactly what she will be wearing on the day?’
‘Yes, she has and is,’ replies Louise, taking up residence on the chaise longue. She puts down her large red handbag and removes her silk scarf from around her neck. She crosses her ankles, placing them to one side, and prepares for the unveiling.
Andrea makes her way along the rack of dresses, checking the names tacked to the front of the plastic.
‘Oh,’ she says, spotting Alice’s name and pulling the covered dress off the rack. ‘I see you chose the Maria.’
‘Yes,’ smiles Alice. ‘I thought it looked the nicest.’
‘Much the best shape for a girl like you,’ says Andrea, looking Alice up and down. ‘Either that or maybe the Daphne.’
‘The Daphne was great,’ agrees Alice. ‘But I just didn’t fancy the square front.’
‘But when the bride has a bosom I often find the Daphne works the best,’ asserts Andrea.
‘Funnily enough,’ says Alice, turning around and starting to strip off, ‘you and I discussed it the first time I came in, eight months ago.’
‘And has the bride’s mother seen the dress yet?’
‘No, she has not,’ Alice’s mother replies.
‘And the bride’s friend?’
Alice suddenly turns around, devoid of all clothes except for a rather expensive-looking white lace bra and matching pants, and all I can think of is lucky Richard – the groom-to-be – and it is all I can do to stop my voice from suddenly rising an octave.
‘No,’ I squeak, and then cough in a more manly fashion. ‘I haven’t seen the dress yet either.’
Andrea pulls on her white gloves, forcing her rather plump fingers as far as the fabric will stretch; the look has all the glamour of a butcher’s window. She removes the transparent plastic cover from the dress with such reverence that all we are missing is the accompaniment of a heavenly choir.
‘Would the bride like to step into the dress?’ she whispers.
‘Oh, sure,’ says Alice. ‘I can’t wait.’ She points a bare foot towards the open bodice.
‘Careful! Bernadette!’ calls Andrea. ‘Can you help the bride?’
The fortunately already-gloved assistant leaps up from the corner and helps Alice into the stiff, heavy dress.
‘It’s just as well we made this a touch smaller,’ says Bernadette, pulling the bodice up around Alice’s waist. ‘You’ve lost a bit of weight since your last fitting.’
Alice turns to face her reflection while the two women pull at the laces of the inner corset and then work on the row of tiny satin-covered buttons that go all the way down the back of the bodice. There is no quickly slipping in and out of this thing. A good three whole minutes later, when both Andrea and Bernadette have worked up quite a sweat in this airless white room, Alice finally turns around to give us the full effect, her eyes watering slightly with emotion. Her smile is so beguiling, I feel my heart tighten in my chest. She looks stunning.
The dress has a strapless bodice and is an A-line shape that is currently very much in vogue with the Home Counties bride. I think they sell more A-line dresses in Fulham than anything else. If the eighties was the decade of the Princess Diana/Elizabeth Emmanuel meringue dress with huge sleeves, and the nineties the cut-on-the-cross slip dress as designed by Narciso Rodriguez and modelled by Carolyn Bisset at her marriage to John F. Kennedy Junior, then this century has so far favoured the A-line, mainly because it flatters almost every figure, no matter how wide of hip or short of leg the bride happens to be. Not that Alice is either, of course.
Wedding-dress fashion is far more traditional and indeed slow-turning than high-street fashion. Bizarrely, from the twenties right through to the fifties it was far more cutting edge a
nd reflective of its times. But for the last twenty years or so it has become more classic and static. Designers will do a yearly catwalk show, but unlike fashion designers they will also keep their bestsellers in stock from year to year. So Vera Wang will have a new collection, as well as dresses from several seasons back. Unlike a fashionista who would not be seen dead in something that is three or four years old, a bride goes into a boutique and chooses something that suits her figure, irrespective of whether it is old hat or hot off the catwalk. Although Bernard has noticed – as this is more his department than mine – that high fashion is returning to the bridal market. Top designers traditionally used to finish their Paris and Milan shows with a wedding dress, but this stopped at least a decade ago. However, this tradition seems to be back, with Vivienne Westwood designing bridal dresses and Alexander McQueen producing a feathered wedding dress at the end of his recent show. And with Pronovias, the Spanish designer bridal specialist, recently opening its thousand-square-metre flagship store in the ultimate fashion location – Bond Street – big frocks are proving to be big business.
But some dresses become iconic by accident. The story behind the Emmanuel dress for Lady Diana is a case in point. Apparently the favourite to design the dress at the time was Hardy Amies, who was already sending half the nation’s posh girls down the aisle, as well as being the Queen’s couturier. But when Vogue magazine called up to say they were doing a round robin to lots of designers for an article about wedding dresses, Hardy Amies were caught on the hop. They sent in a few sketches of pretty summer organza dresses for nineteen-year-old country brides, not realizing what they had been asked for. It was neither show-stopping nor appropriate for a royal wedding. And it was Elizabeth and David Emmanuel who clinched the deal from under everyone’s noses.
Wedding Babylon Page 8