Any time Patricia Torvalds made an appointment at a bridal salon, she found herself besieged with perplexing questions. “They would be like, ‘What’s your theme? What’s your vibe?’” she recalls. “And I was always like, ‘My vibe is getting married. My theme is white.’”
While Patricia, a software engineer and swimsuit designer, clearly didn’t have an unwavering vision for her wedding to law student Adam Nagy, she did have one stipulation. “It was really important to me that almost everything be vintage,” says Patricia, who has a particular interest in turn-of-the-century pieces. “I hardly ever wear new clothes.”
The search for vintage wedding weekend attire—spanning everything from the New York City courthouse ceremony to the Battery Park after-party—became a multi-city event, which brought many of Patricia’s loved ones into the fold. Her mother and sister helped her source her courthouse look: “I wore this 1930s dress that I found with my little sister, Celeste, in Portland, Oregon, where I grew up,” Patricia says. “It was totally kooky. It had this low-cut lace neckline, puff sleeves, and I think it had been long at some point, but they’d cut it to knee length.” She styled it with a short veil in a halo of mini pearls from the 1980s—which she sourced on a trip to Los Angeles with her mom—and vintage Chanel shoes.
For the welcome party at Adam’s family’s apartment in Tribeca, Patricia also assembled her look with the help of her community. A friend who works at an auction house tipped her off when Peggy Moffitt’s archive went to the block, which is where Patricia found a flowy, tiered Rudi Gernreich dress from the ‘60s. “I was there for the preview, and then I ended up winning the dress that I wore,” she says. She accessorized with a pair of knee-high lace-up Free Lance boots, which she borrowed from a friend who owns the downtown vintage store, Fussy, and finished off the look with a vintage Omega watch—a gift from Adam.
Patricia struggled to find a dress for the wedding itself, which took place at Trinity Church, a historical Episcopalian church in the Gothic Revival style in Manhattan’s financial district. She booked an appointment at celebrity favorite Tab Vintage in Los Angeles. “I got an appointment, maybe in June, for our August wedding. My mom was freaking out,” she says. But luckily, Patricia was connected to Tab’s owner Alexis Novak via their mutual friend, Neverworns host and former Vogue fashion writer Liana Satenstein. “Alexis from Tab reached out. She was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I see you’re still looking for a dress. I can bump your appointment up,’” Patricia recalls. “She was so sweet. The team was genuinely amazing.”
Tab was the last stop on Patricia’s bridal extravaganza. “I feel like I tried on over a hundred dresses,” she says. “I tried on 1950s Balenciaga and Comme from the 2000s, 1980s Bob Mackie, ’90s Vera Wang, ’70s Guy Laroche. We tried on everything.”
In the end, she settled on a 1992 Callaghan dress by Romeo Gigli, a yellow-tinged strapless dress with a netted overlayer. “It was perfect—it didn’t need a hem or anything, which is crazy,” she says. She accessorized with a pair of fingerless lace gloves from the 1930s, which she found at Replika Vintage in Los Angeles. “LA has such incredible vintage,” she says. “I feel like I didn’t even really respect the depth of their vintage—especially the vintage event-wear scene.” Also vintage were her pointy-toe Fendi shoes and her 1920s lace veil. “It’s from France. My friend Mia Vesper just found it online,” she says.
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Mia, who owns the brand Vesper Obscura, would go on to play an important role in the after-party look. “Mia just has the most beautiful, sexy, little mini dresses,” she says. “They’re all unique because it s all antique cut work lace.” Patricia paired the ecru and white patterned lace minidress with Falke stockings.
Although Patricia joked that her “theme is white,” she found herself drawn to the more yellowy, aged color common with vintage pieces. “In New York City, everything gets so dirty,” she says. “But mostly I find that warm, creamy color very beautiful.”
