Wedding Dresses 1775-2014, V&A - exhibition review

The shape of marriage has changed this year; but so over the past 250 years have wedding dresses. They have always closely followed contemporary fashion, noticeable in Sixties’ mini-dresses and the puritanically demure-looking lines of the Seventies from designers such as Geoffrey Beene. Yet, though “virginal” white is now historical, the “white wedding” still dominates — as this major exhibition proves, with 80 dresses from 1775 to now, plus some colourful accessories such as sexy 19th-century garters.

But modern weddings inspire invention. Take Gwen Stefani’s 2002 Gaultier for Dior dress spray-painted pink to the knee, as if she had waded up the aisle through beetroot. And burlesque artist Dita Von Teese’s shot-purple taffeta Vivienne Westwood, straight out of Gone With the Wind, is as attention-grabbing as its cinch-waisted wearer (though the smallest waist on show belonged to a Harriet Joyce, who for her 1899 marriage made her own, also purple, outfit).