The creation of my wedding look was a slow burn: it took 20 years to realize. I met the designer at a summer camp on the Chesapeake Bay. A few years later, we excitedly reunited at our public high school. Before the existence of Vogue Runway, we went to Barnes and Noble to buy print magazines with pages and pages of collections arranged by fashion week city. I first heard the names Balenciaga, Tom Ford, and so many others huddling over these magazines like a campfire, listening to Nicholas dissecting silhouettes while Carrie Bradshaw strode away from Mr. Big’s engagement party on a DVD repeating in the background.
Nicholas knew he would become a designer. He was already a designer. He draped fabric on me after school until it gowned to his satisfaction, and with nowhere to go, we’d go anywhere—a field, a gas station, his basement, McDonald’s—and shoot Polaroid “editorials.” We’d hop on AOL Instant Messenger and give each other “fashion challenges” to style ourselves, and half an hour later he’d ring my doorbell, and we’d talk through our looks like we were presenting to Anna Wintour. Our rebellion was driving to faraway thrift stores without permission; we were caught when his car started smoking and we had to call his mom from the roadside hours away.
During prom season, Nicholas’s house became a solo atelier, with girls trying on dresses over Ugg boots. I demanded priority as a client on the grounds that I was most willing to take a fashion risk. Like the white one-shoulder bias-cut asymmetrical gown with hand-sewn green silk leaves cascading down the back that I wore to junior prom. I admit, when he sewed some leaves on a friend’s Abercrombie jean skirt to practice the technique and she wore it to school ahead of prom, I stomped with teenage proprietarian fury and confronted him in our high school parking lot. (Sorry, Nick!)
Tantrum excluded, my sessions as Nicholas’ fit model fashioned new context for our imagined future: his clothes gave shape to our inner longing for elsewhere. Together, we materialized belief in the power of style and self-creation.
Nicholas went to Central Saint Martin’s, and has designed for the major fashion houses he told me about on his floor. I am writing this story about us for Vogue.com, so… we did it. Now, two decades later, we are each other’s chosen family. When I got engaged in August 2022, I knew I’d never shop for a wedding dress. I called the boy from summer camp, now living in Paris with his husband, designing for Balenciaga Couture.
I know these are atypical circumstances for planning the look for your wedding. When we walked arm in arm to breakfast at camp, he was wearing penguin pajama pants. I am very lucky that that friend grew up to be a fashion genius.
I didn’t know what I wanted to look like on my wedding day. But I knew I wanted my bridal posture to embody the role of a host, arranging a world to hold the ceremony and revelry of our wedding. Having clarity on this role took the pressure off of creating an exact image, and instead we let the look evolve as the center of a story.
We started with the concept of a hostess gown, a type of formal loungewear with a long jacket worn over pants by women of the house in the 1940s and 50s. We saved images of Ann Miller in Lovely to Look At (1952), and Jane Powell in A Date with Judy (1948), alongside the ruffle piped jackets over slim pants Oscar de la Renta designed for Pierre Balmain Couture Spring 1998.
He took my measurements on the day after Christmas, and then we had leftover pie. I gave him my favorite pair of vintage high-waist trousers I thrifted in college to use as a starting pattern for the wedding pants. Then, we went to an antique store in Annapolis, and together found intricate blue embroidered tablecloths that we knew would be “something” (ultimately, my wedding trousers). From then until I flew to Paris in April, Nicholas worked on devising a folded-down lapel around my shoulders for the jacket, to be held up by a sheer tulle racerback.
I stepped from the airplane straight into a muslin at the atelier for Mr Smith Paris, who Nicholas selected to tailor the suiting for the project, located in the 18th arrondissement just north of Montmartre. In that first fitting, Nicholas kept the jacket extra long, so we could determine how much to shorten it in person. Zero. When I put it on, the exaggerated, blunt train clearly had to stay.
For three days between fittings, Nicholas, his husband Jake Wiseman, and two of my best friends bopped around Paris flea markets with me hunting for candelabras, vases, and cutwork tablecloths to be decor for the wedding. Collecting these table treasures felt integral to creating the look, as companion elements in the evening world I hoped to create.
One major stop was Chez Sarah Vintage in Saint-Ouen. When you enter the hallway-shaped shop, they make you put on white gloves. Like little archivist squirrels, we spent hours tucking in and out of dozens of drawers in the shop’s ceiling-high collection of antique ribbons and trim. Intuitively, we made piles: Victorian blue ribbons and lace trimmings for something to do with the outfit; thick deco print ribbons in the wedding palette (pale cornflower, curtain red, chestnut, and polished silver) for something to do with the flowers; and antique milliner’s flowers, which I made into boutonnieres.
We brought the nest we dubbed “the ribbons” back to the atelier. Nicholas pinned the newly tailored muslin, devised its closure, considered a bustle, and proposed fabric ideas (when the white yardage arrived in an unbelievably glamorous box from Italy, he sent me a video of him opening it). The fabric was a silk wool suiting with its yarn spun like organza to give it a whipped-like body that hearkened to the pillow-y ’60s couture marshmallow gazar and crepe in our inspiration images.
Then, Nicholas started to pin and play, the way we used to in high school. He took the ribbons and swathed them into a delicate top, stopping to consider his work while I held my arms up to avoid pins. This became my second look for dancing, which my best friend hand-sewed while on vacation in Brittany the month before the wedding.
A few months later, he shipped the newest muslin to New York, and my friend Julie Houts conducted a fitting with Nicholas via FaceTime. My fiance, Lily Olsen, was there to take film photos, while Julie took dozens of fit photos to text to Nicholas.
Two days before the wedding was the first time I saw my final look in person, at the New York-based atelier of Estelle Chatorrier, who worked for over a decade at Chanel under the direction of Karl Lagerfeld. I put on the trousers first. Nicholas digitized the embroidery on the antique tablecloths to patchwork the pieces on the trousers, and Mr Smith filled in the embroidery, carefully matching the old style of workmanship. They will likely never be surpassed as the most stunning and perfectly fit pants I’ve ever zipped up.
Next, I tried on the jacket, which had been temporarily lined so we could test the train. Nicholas showed Estelle how he conceived of the bustle, and then they pinned the final fit for Estelle to finish in 24 hours. I cried once, when Nicholas showed me the silk tags his husband hand embroidered for inside the jacket, pants, and top, with N. Aburn for KBO (Katherine Bernard Olsen).
On the day of the wedding, I put on the look for its hostessing, family establishing, world-building, and friendship-honoring duties. Nicholas and Jake took turns tying and retying the bow closure on the jacket until it met their standard, which was one of the many beautiful rituals of creation I took in with deep appreciation that day. Nicholas stayed with Lily and I right up until we walked down the aisle. I entered into marriage in a look realized by my longest friendship, and I feel so lucky to have been seen—and sewed—by Nicholas for these two decades.
