Shortly before the start of the royal wedding last Friday, designers and bridal boutiques planning knockoff dresses went into action when they got their first glimpse of the gown.
“The second we saw it on the screen, it was beautiful,” said Omid Moradi, chief executive for Faviana, a dress-making business based in Manhattan that plans to produce its own version. “It was just very elegant and glamorous.”
It was Pippa’s.
He immediately called his mother, the design director of Faviana, to tell her to begin sketching the dress of the bridesmaid, Pippa Middleton, sister of the bride, Kate Middleton. “It almost looked like a bridal gown,” he said.
Celebrity wedding gowns have inspired many creative copies, but executives in the bridal business say this is the first time they can recall companies wishing to design a dress based on what a bridesmaid wore, too.
“There was really no anticipation about Pippa’s dress,” said Dan Rentillo, design director for David’s Bridal, which will also make a version of her gown. “I can’t think of one where there was such a fuss over the bridesmaid’s dress.”
Now, many companies across what is called the fast-fashion industry are scrambling to reproduce not one, but two gowns designed originally by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen, doubling the pressure to turn the couture designs into mass-market creations as soon as possible.
Burton did not seem shy about reproducing either — several fashion critics have pointed out that Pippa Middleton’s dress resembled one that Cameron Diaz wore in 2010, also an Alexander McQueen.
Some of the swooning, though, was about Middleton herself, not the dress. “She wore it so well, so we said, ‘We’ll do that dress right away,’ “ said Andrew Hops, vice president for JS Collections.
©2011 The New York
Times News Service
