WWD Goes All "Say Yes to the Dress" On Us

WWD recently asked several designers to sketch a potential wedding dress for Kate Middleton (because when you work for WWD you can call up Karl Lagerfeld and be like “Hey, want to sketch a dress that’ll never be made?” and he won’t hang up on you). While it’s pretty much guaranteed that Kate will follow royal tradition and pick a British designer, like Bruce Oldfield, to design the real thing, some of the designs are amazing.

Gucci’s dress was my favourite. The simple, elegant design meshes well with K-Midd’s (shut up, I’m going to make “K-Midd” happen) personal style.

Another minimalist design was J. Crew’s. The company’s vice president of wedding and special occasion, Tom Mora, told WWD that he thinks “there will be so many comparisons to the late Princess Diana that her dress should be almost the opposite of what Diana’s was – modern, simple and very elegant.”

But the ultimate in simplicity was Kimberley Ovitz’s basic sketch of a tank dress.

On the opposite side of the spectrum was Lela Rose’s flouncy, apparently tiered gown. The floral detail on the veil is amazing.

Valentino’s design is dreamily beautiful. Valentino’s Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli told WWD that they “designed a ‘blossoming’ dress because [they] imagined her as the new Botticellian Venus. Gorgeous as the dress is, Botticelli’s Venus probably isn’t a look Sloaney Kate would go for, and it’s hard to imagine her going for boho details like the loose, off-the-shoulder sleeves.

Instead of a sketch, Christian Lacroix submitted a ridiculously cool mixed-media collage. The designer himself probably sums up his dress best, in his description of it for WWD: “Something old: Victorian skirt. Something new: patchwork gown. Something borrowed: Queen Elizabeth’s veil. Something red: Elizabethan top, as red was the wedding colour until 1900!”

All photos from WWD.com