DOORWAYS TO YESTERDAY

 

There's something about an old doorway that invites the imagination. Perhaps it is the worn wood, the fading plaster, or the light spilling across a threshold that has been crossed countless times before. Stand there long enough and it becomes easy to imagine another woman standing in exactly the same place—a bride from another decade, dressed in lace, silk and crepe, about to step from one part of her life into another.

 Doorways to Yesterday looks back through the language of bridal fashion rather than attempting to recreate the past exactly. The gowns borrow from the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s: long veils and lace mantillas, fluid crepes, graceful capelets, dropped and natural waistlines, delicate beadwork and the softer silhouettes that gradually replaced the structured bridal fashions of an earlier age. Some whisper their period; others freely mix details from several decades.

And always there is the doorway. A bride pauses in it, looks through it, turns back toward it or disappears beyond it. The setting may be weathered and the clothes inspired by another time, but the moment itself hasn't changed very much. A wedding is, after all, a threshold—and perhaps that is why brides and old doorways seem to belong together.

A doorway to another time.

A moment before forever.

Something old, beautifully new.

Where yesterday meets today.

The beauty of a backward glance.

Designs by Amy-Jo Tatum Bridal Couture