LONDON — It was the lace wedding dress that launched a million lace wedding dresses when Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco on April 19, 1956.
The princess’ Helen Rose dress was a gift to the actress from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. It was crafted by a 35-member team over six weeks including dyers, beaders, milliners, seamstresses, hand embroiderers and sketch artists. The gown is a combination of rose point lace, silk faille, silk tulle, seed pearls and wax flowers.
Twenty-five yards each of peau de soie and silk taffeta, 100 yards of silk net and 300 yards of val lace were used for the ivory gown and veil.
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The veil was designed not to hide Grace of Monaco’s face by using silk illusion net and finishing touches of rose point lace and reembroidered with thousands of tiny pearls.
The back of the veil features two tiny lace love birds.
The modest wedding dress set the tone for conservative wedding dresses. The gown featured long sleeves and covered the bride’s entire front and back. Made in four parts, the dress consisted of a bodice with an attached underbodice, skirt support and slip, which were covered with a skirt and a smoothing petticoat, a ruffled petticoat and an attached foundation petticoat. A cummerbund was then added, as was a lace insert in back.
The dress has a seamless bodice that took two skilled seamstresses one month to reembroidered together two pieces of lace together.
The princess carried a prayer book to the religious ceremony that was covered in the same material and rose point lace used in the gown.
At the wedding ceremony, Kelly, who had grown up practising to become a ballerina wore 2 and a half inch heels, making her almost the same height as Rainier III, who was 5’7 and the princess was 5’6.
The shoes were designed by David Evins, adding his own name in the right shoe and Kelly’s name in the left shoe. The designer also added a copper penny in the shoe for good luck.
The princess donated her gown to her hometown museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art two months after the wedding — as well as her headdress, veil, shoes and the lace- and pearl-encrusted prayer book she carried down the aisle.
To celebrate the princess’ 50th wedding anniversary to Prince Rainier, the museum exhibited her gown in 2006 along with one of the bridesmaid’s gowns and the flower girl’s gown in an exhibition titled “Fit for a Princess: Grace Kelly’s Wedding Dress.”
The wedding dress cost $65,200 to make in 1956, which has a value of $623,000 today, making it one of the most expensive wedding dresses in history. Queen Elizabeth II paid $42,000 for her Norman Hartnell wedding dress and is valued at $1.6 million today.
“It was such an intricate dress. It was kept a secret until just two days before the wedding. Everyone wanted to see it,” Kristina Haugland, associate curator of costumes and textiles at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, told WWD at the time.
“Helen Rose always said she wanted the focal point to be in the back, since that’s what most people saw during the ceremony,” Haugland added.
As fit for any princess, there was more than one dress involved in Kelly’s wedding to Rainier III, who never remarried after the death of his wife in 1982.
On April 18, a day before the wedding, Kelly wore a pink floral dress designed by Rose to the civil ceremony that she wore with a Juliet cap, otherwise known as a mesh cap decorated with pearls and beads.
The princess wore a white silk Lanvin gown designed by Antonio Canovas del Castillo to a press conference on the evening of her civil ceremony at a press conference.
Kelly’s beautifully detailed lace gown has never gone out of style or taste as it’s been emulated by the likes of Paris Hilton, Kitty Spencer and Kate Middleton.
When millions tuned in to watch Middleton marry Prince William in 2011 in a Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen design, many cited likeness to bridal gowns worn by Queen Elizabeth and Kelly, and remarked on its traditional and somewhat modest allure.
The Victorian-inspired dress was designed with an ivory lace bodice paired with a high lace collar and long lace sleeves. Her satin skirt featured a 9-foot train, which was carried by her sister Pippa Middleton, who equally made an impact at the wedding in a fitted ivory-hued dress also designed by Burton for Alexander McQueen.
Lace was a crucial design component of Middleton’s wedding gown. The dress featured lace that was handmade at London’s Royal School of Needlework based at Hampton Court Palace and was appliquéd with individual flowers that were hand cut from the lace. The bodice and skirt were designed from hand-cut English lace and French Chantilly lace.