Dress with basque waist

Jane Malthus wore this Thornton Hall dress when she got married in December 1988. "We only decided to get married three weeks before, so I purchased a dress to wear from Arthur Barnett's in-store boutique. She wore the dress with a $3 straw hat that was dressed with ribbons and artificial flowers by her colleague, Miss Rae Vernon. Rae had worked as a milliner in New York during the Second World War. Jane didn't have official bridesmaids but "a bridesmaid collective" of about 18 women aged from 7 to 70 years old. She is pictured with her sisters. "I got back into the dress on my 25th wedding anniversary, and did it up!"

Details

Credit: Garment loan courtesy of Jane Malthus
Copyright: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License
Copyright: Image © Jane Malthus
Designer: Isabel Harris
Manufacturing location: Auckland
Garment type: Wedding dress
Material: Rayon faille
Features: Full bodice with cut on sleeves gathered onto a double breasted basque. Skirt features un-pressed pleats.
Colour: Pale pink
Label: Thornton Hall
Date: 1988