“I’ve always been obsessed with fashion,” says fashion designer Claudia Twisk. After four years of studying womenswear, the Australian native traveled the globe designing for brands like The Row, Eckhaus Latta, and Uniqlo. While she now lives in Paris and works as a senior designer at A.P.C., Claudia spent last year moonlighting as a wedding dress designer—with herself as a client.
Initially, Claudia never intended to design her own gown. “I remember my mom being like, ‘Never make your wedding dress. You will be up all night. You will never sleep,’” says the designer. “So that was always in the back of my mind.” However, she did have a very specific vision of what she would wear to marry Dimitri Limberopoulos—her partner of eight years—at their French chateau wedding. “I wanted theater, and I wanted fashion as performance. I wanted it to just be this feast for the senses and to just go really big,” she shares. “We ve been together for so long and all of our friends are such creatives, so I just wanted to have so much fun.”
Claudia’s dream dress was a design by John Galliano for Dior from the brand’s fall 2007 couture collection. “I realized that it was a skirt and a top that kind of looked like a dress. I knew that maybe I could find one of those pieces,” she says. The bride gave herself a timeline to search through vintage collections and auction house sales for this couture creation before coming up with a plan B. “I had about six months left and knew I was going to have to give up,” says Claudia. “But I was like, ‘Why can’t I put my own creative spin on this? I m actually just gonna make the dress that I really want on my own, take bits of inspiration from all my favorite bridal and couture designers, and make something really unique.’ It opened up a lot more creativity.”
“I started by looking for the right fabrics, because I knew that they would give structure, form, and more kind of idea of silhouette. I really enjoy working on the stand so I was like, that s where it will come to life,” explains Claudia. “At the same time, I also started working on the corset structure, because with so much fabric, it had to be a really small waist to give it body.”
Since fitting the gown to her own body would prove to be difficult, Claudia began working with modéliste Léa C. Warrel to help her with the dress’ construction. She also had friend Yens Cuyvers, who designs at Courrèges, help consult on the dress design and Adele Lorenzo work on the bodice embellishments. “It was like being a student again,” says Claudia. “We were all just excited by the dress itself and we were so inspired.”
The dress would ultimately be three different parts—a corset, an embellished top with sleeves, and a full, bubbled skirt. During the construction, the designer made sure they created proportional, “controlled drama” in the silhouette. “I didn’t want to look like a princess,” Claudia notes. “It needed to look haute couture.” Expanding the volume of the skirt and supporting the weight of the bubbled fabric led to using an old-school technique. “Initially, we were thinking of using lots and lots of layers of tulle, but it was all collapsing,” she says. After trying different crinolines, they decided to create a hoop skirt. “It was perfect and the structure was maintained the whole time,” shares the bride. “They seem kind of intimidating—and I was a little intimidated going into it—but they re actually so easy. I was just so happy with the outcome.
The wedding day arrived and guests gathered on the misty grounds of the chateau just 30 minutes outside of Paris. While Claudia had warned her fiancé that the dress was going to be big, she hesitated about her design just before the ceremony. “I remember thinking I ve gone a little bit too far. This was kind of a lot, but everyone was so excited and encouraging,” she remembers. “I was like, ‘Don t second guess yourself. We had this vision for a year. We made it happen. Just carry with confidence.’” The moment the doors of the chateau opened and her guests all saw the dress, there was an audible gasp. The bride says, “It was really a mouth drop. Everyone was like ‘Yas!’”
Claudia changed into another design she made herself for the reception. “Simultaneously, I was making a dress for dinner,” she says. “I always knew that I was not going to be able to eat in that dress.” She also wanted to be able to preserve her ceremony gown—which she now has on display in her apartment. The second look was inspired by a Grecian silhouette with draping to create a “sexy but lady-like” style. “I think getting a reception dress as well is becoming so much more common because people want to be able to dance,” she shares. “Even just bustling a dress, you re still gonna have volume around you. I wanted something I could have fun and move around in.”
Designing her own dress was just the start for Claudia, who has now begun creating custom, made-to-order gowns for other brides. “It was always something I was a little intimidated by, but now it s so much fun,” she shares. “Now, people are so open in how they think of bridal dresses. There’s so much flexibility and so much you can do. It s super exciting.”
