It began with a jacket from the Plutonian Tears collection for Spring 2017. Raffaella Hanley, the lady behind the crafty New York label Lou Dallas, never once designed anything for a bride.It began with a jacket from the Plutonian Tears collection for Spring 2017. Raffaella Hanley, the lady behind the crafty New York label Lou Dallas, never once designed anything for a bride. The women she makes clothes for are slightly more concerned with dressing like chic magpies and misfits, rather than playing the traditional, dare we say cookie-cutter, part for their nuptials. Plutonian Tears doesn’t exactly give off a “to have and to hold” vibe. So it was an exciting and challenging prospect when Hanley’s friend Esther Sibiude, who is a contemporary artist, called on her to create a unique wedding ensemble for the big day this past March. After the bride-to-be explained to the designer that she wanted something like one of the jackets from the Spring ’17 collection, Hanley started thinking creatively about how to make such a lo-fi look fit for a bride. “I’d never really thought about what my wedding outfit should look like,” Sibiude explains. “I am an artist and I consider marriage to be something conventional, but on the other hand I am a romantic.” She adds, “I wanted something chic and sexy to wear as I entered into adulthood. I knew it had to be unique, inventive, and powerful, like a good piece of art.” Hanley took Sibiude at the very start of the process to a fabric shop in midtown Manhattan where they found beautiful ivory silk and an embroidered mesh material that would become the cropped shirt layered underneath the jacket. “The idea of a suit came to my mind and seemed empowering in a feminist way,” Sibiude says. “I wanted to feel strong and not just pretty on that particular day.” “I think a wedding look should be all about the bride’s fantasy,” Hanley notes. “Hopefully their fantasy is romantic, glamorous, sexy, and one that sweeps the groom off his feet.” As the two friends collaborated and constructed together, Sibiude certainly felt as if she was living in a fantastical moment: “I would leave my studio in Greenpoint and turn into a very fine sculpture myself—Raffaella would measure me, wrap me, pin me, and see things that I couldn’t see. It was a beautiful experience.” The resulting wedding suit was even more beautiful, and the groom, artist Jett Strauss, was definitely impressed. “Jett was happily surprised when he first saw me,” Sibiude says. “We never really told him it was in preparation, and because everything was pretty spontaneous, he didn’t expect such an amazing look.” Hanley says that she looked to Chanel’s Spring 2010 Couture collection and Comme des Garçons’s Spring 2012 collection, as well as old Christian Lacroix for reference. Ultimately, however, the ruffle-sleeved lace-up jacket, high-waist silk trousers, and sheer cropped blouse were as refreshingly unusual as a bridal look can be. “It’s funny, I’d never really paid much attention to wedding looks or thought about making them,” Hanley adds. “But then, I totally fell in love with the experience.” Above, take a closer look at Esther Sibiude’s custom Lou Dallas wedding suit.
POST: 2023-03-22