by 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.
Princess Helen Rose’s dress was a gift to the actress from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. It was designed by a team of 35 members over six weeks including dyers, beaders, millers, seamstresses, hand embroiderers and sketch artists. The dress is a combination of rose point lace, silk voile, silk tulle, seed pearls and wax flowers.
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Twenty-five yards each of peau de soie and silk taffeta, 100 yards of silk netting and 300 yards of val lace were used for the ivory dress and the veil.
The faceless veil was designed to hide the face of Grace of Monaco using silk illusion netting and a final touch of rose-pointed lace re-embroidered with thousands of tiny pearls.
On the back of the veil are two tiny lace lovebirds.
The modest wedding dress sets the tone for conservative wedding dresses. The dress had long sleeves and covered the entire face and back of the bride. Made in four parts, the dress consisted of a bodice with an attached petticoat, a skirt support and a slip, which was covered with a skirt and smoothing petals, ruffled petals and an attached base patten. A cummerbund was then added, as was a lace insert at the back.
The dress has a seamless bodice that took two skilled seamstresses one month to re-embroider two pieces of lace together.
The princess carried a prayer book to the religious ceremony which was covered in the same material as the rose point lace used in the dress.
At the wedding ceremony, Kelly, who had grown up practicing to be a ballerina, wore 2 and a half inch heels, making her about the same height as Rainier III, who was 5’7 and the princess was 5’6 .
David Evins designed the shoes, putting his own name in the right shoe and Kelly’s name in the left shoe. The designer also placed a copper penny in the shoe for good luck.
The princess donated her dress to her hometown museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art two months after the wedding – along with her headpiece, dress, shoes and the lace and pearl-encrusted prayer book she carried down the aisle.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the princess’ wedding to Prince Rainier, the museum displayed her dress in 2006 along with one of the bridesmaid dresses and the flower girl in an exhibit titled “Fit for a Princess: Grace Kelly’s Wedding Dress.”
The wedding dress cost $65,200 to make in 1956, which is worth $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 worth $1.6 million today.
“It was such an intricate dress. It was kept 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 back to be the focal point, so that’s what most people saw during the ceremony,” Haugland added.
As befits any princess, Kelly’s wedding to Rainier III, who never married after his wife’s death in 1982, involved more than just one dress.
On April 18, a day before the wedding, Kelly wore a pink floral dress designed by Rose for the civil ceremony which she wore with a Juliet cap, known as a mesh cap decorated with pearls and beads.
The princess wore a white silk Lanvin dress designed by Antonio Canovas del Castillo to a press conference on the evening of her civil ceremony at a press conference.
Kelly’s beautiful lace dress has never gone out of style or taste as it has been imitated by the likes of Paris Hilton, Kitty Spencer and Kate Middleton.
When millions watched Middleton marry Prince William in 2011 in a Sarah Burton design for Alexander McQueen, many noted a resemblance to a wedding dress worn by Queen Elizabeth and Kelly, and commented its traditional and modest appeal.
Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly Through the Years: From American Actress to Royalty
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The Victorian-inspired dress was designed with an ivory lace bodice paired with a high lace collar and long lace sleeves. Her satin skirt had a 9ft train, which was carried by her sister Pippa Middleton, who impressed at the wedding in a fitted ivory gown that Burton also designed for Alexander McQueen.
Lace was a key design component of Middleton’s wedding dress. The dress had lace that was handmade by the Royal London School of Needlework based at Hampton Court Palace and was appliquéd with individual flowers cut by hand from the lace. The bodice and skirt were designed from hand-cut English lace and French Chantilly lace.
Launch Gallery: Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly Through the Years: From American Actress to Royalty
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