Spending hours working to create the perfect wedding dress sounds like the kind of challenge famous designers featured at Kleinfeld Bridal take on to please their brides. Students in Western Wayne’s Fashion II Class worked for about three weeks on a Wedding Gown Remake Project in which they took gowns donated to the school and redesigned them based on the style of professional wedding dress designers.
Seniors Kayla Fitzpatrick and Cailin Brown worked on this very challenging project.
Kayla’s original dress had a lot of length to it in both the front and back. She decided to turn her dress into what she described as a “Modern Victorian” style. She kept much of the train length but shortened the front of the dress to about knee length.
“The biggest challenge I faced in my redesign was working with the beading on the dress,” she explained. “You have to be careful to not pull a string or it could be ruined.”
Kayla also redesigned a veil for the dress. She took it off the headband it was originally on and put it on a choker necklace so that way it would be like a cape to go with the wedding dress.
“When I saw the veil I thought it was just too pretty to get rid of,” she said. “So I decided to turn it into a cape-like veil because I just love the cape trend and thought it would make the ensemble look more modern.”
Fellow classmate Cailin explained that she wanted her dress to be the type of gown a bride could wear on the beach in the summertime but still be somewhat formal.
The dress she started out with had many layers of fabric. Cailin decided to shorten the gown to about tea length and kept some of the back train. She also added a pink ribbon around the waist.
“If there weren’t so many layers it would have been easier to work with,” she explained. “I still plan to work on the dress more before showing it in our spring show.”
Both of the girls will have students model these wedding dresses along with a variety of other pieces that will be a part of their respective senior collections.
From left: Cailin Brown and Kayla Fitzpatrick pose with the wedding dresses they redesigned.
Kayla Fitzpatrick’s dress before and after her redesign. She calls this style “Modern Victorian.”
Cailin’s dress after and after her redesign. She envisions a bride wearing this dress to a summer wedding on a beach.
