Wedding dress

Mme O'Donovan

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1882, H. B. Ellwanger's book The Rose identified nearly a thousand varieties. However, nineteenthth-century Americans continued to love and cultivate rambling and climbing roses for their informal gardens, prizing their prolific flowering and freedom of growth. Thus, rambling roses in a twiggy pattern with their simpler, wilder bloom grow upward on this wedding dress, rather than cascading downward in the more customary pattern.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art