Hello lovely readers, lace is everywhere right now and barely a day goes by without pics appearing of celebrities wearing gowns and dresses made from this most traditional of fabrics. But what’s so great about lace? Why can’t we get enough of this super delicate material? Well readers, the answer comes from years ago…

 

Every stylish celeb who has headed up the aisle of late has been working the lace gown. Geri Halliwell’s Phillipa Lepley dress and the Galia design worn by Michelle Keegan are both recent examples of stars who’ve fallen for this exquisite fabric and whilst it’s easy to credit Kate Middleton with rekindling our love of lace, that’s not the whole story.

 

 

 

 

 

Firstly, lace is traditional. Now that might sound a little strange but stay with me. You see, in an age of fast fashion and fleeting fame, lace makes a statement of permanence. It’s timeless, it’s elegant and it’s here to stay so no wonder it’s a favourite for wedding dresses. Lace comes with its own pedigree, its own guaranteed ticket to the front row and in a world of fabrics, it’s royalty.

 

Lace has long been expensive (which is partly why it was used for wedding dresses in years gone by because it said good things about the people who could afford to wear it) and handmade lace still is. It’s synonymous with luxury and sophistication and traditional, couture designers use real lace as a badge of honour.

 

 

 

 

 

When you’re working with such a costly and fragile fabric, you really need to know what you’re doing. Pull it a little too much in one direction and the patterning and detailing is ruined and yet if you don’t sew it confidently, it’ll lose shape. Creating beautiful gowns and dresses from lace isn’t something for beginners, it’s for talented designers and makers only.

 

Lace is also amazingly flexible and I don’t mean just the physical properties of the material itself. Lace can be made in any colour and in any pattern from the most ethereal gossamer-like designs to more robust weaves and it can be used as an embellishment or as the primary fabric in any design. Lace allows designers to really experiment with garment construction while still keeping a classic feel.

 

It can be whatever you want it to be – fine lace used alone can be revealing and flirtatious and heavier laces or garments with underlayers are more demure. It can be dreamy and overtly feminine or stronger and more confident. Lace is a fabric that has many sides to its personality.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the eternal appeal of lace rests in the fact that it’s undeniably special day, not every day. Lace is the fabric that you wear for those once-in-a-lifetime occasions because it automatically makes a statement. It’s exceptional in every way and, when you wear it well, so are you.

 

Credits: Hello Magazine, Daily Mail, People, Glamour