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by Francois Truffaut
I recently wrote about Vera Wang's black wedding dress which I described as a dress fit for a vampire's bride. French filmmaker Francois Truffaut's 1968 film The Bride Wore Black (La Mariée était en noir) reminds me of this black wedding dress. The film was from a novel by William Irish (pseudonym for Cornell Woolrich). Here is a short synopsis of the novel from amazon.com:
No one knew who she was, where she came from, or why she had entered their lives. All they really knew about her was that she possessed a terrifying beauty-and that each time she appeared, a man died horribly.And of the Truffaut film from Wikipedia:
[The Bride Wore Black] is a revenge film in which five men make a young bride a widow on her wedding day. She takes her revenge, methodically killing each of the five men using various methods.I don't know if Vera Wang has watched this film (or if she even knows about it), but the psyche is a strange thing. After all, there are only a limited number of references and connections we can make in this world.
Wang's flashing bride in black is a negative statement on weddings, and life, in general. In our culture, white is for purity, whereas black is often for death, the mysterious (and evil?) underworld, darkness and obfuscation. And if the bride wears black, it is as though the she went to her own funeral. Or is a widow executing a vengeful act, as the Truffaut film discloses. And what real-life bride wants to be dressed in black, even with the modern woman's dearth of cultural knowledge and sensitivity?
Surprisingly, the white wedding dress, which is the norm for modern Western weddings, is relatively new. The British Queen Victoria set the tradition with her own wedding dress in 1840. Prior to that, brides wore dresses fitting their status and wealth.
