Dowry Gown | Bosch Bride

may 2025

vintage lace (torchon, filet, cutwork, mechanized, crochet)

This bridal look is designed to make clear the value of the bride. Lace frames the body, as a traditional element of the dowry and proof of the bride's skill and value as a woman. Her body is the real object being given away and proven valuable. Bloomers consume her body, liberatory subversion of the autonomy taken away by her objectification as a bride, simultaneously revealing in their connotations as an undergarment and referential to early 'split skirts', the first pants worn by early American feminist reformers.

In this dress, the bride is an absurd object present at the ceremony and an independent, self assured character.