‘I Wanted to Feel Like a Gender-Fluid Bride’: Harris Reed Created Four Looks—Including a Naked Dress—For His Wedding Extravaganza In Palermo
Dating apps can get a bad rap. But for the British-American fashion designer Harris Reed, the fact that he met his now-husband, Eitan Senerman, on Raya is a source of pride, not embarrassment. “I think a lot of people want to have this moment where you meet on a sleeper train, or an intimate restaurant by chance,” he shares. “But I also think we’d probably have never spoken if we hadn’t met online; we’re very different people. We always joke that if we saw each other in a bar, we’d smile at each other and be so interested, but we had such different friend circles and we were in such different places in our lives.”
Senerman proposed at The Newt in Somerset, where the couple had gone on one of their earliest and most memorable dates. “I remember it was only our third date, but we’d ended up talking about life, kids, family, and all these huge things,” Reed shares. “It was really mind-blowing for me.” Despite finding themselves in the exact same spot in the hotel gardens, Harris didn’t twig that something was afoot. “We went for a walk and there was a picnic basket, candles, Champagne, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, someone’s having a date in our spot!’ And I was almost annoyed,” he jokes. “Then as we got closer I realized someone was getting engaged, but it didn’t click in my brain that it was us getting engaged. Being a queer individual, you never really feel you deserve love.”
Senerman had sourced the ring—a vintage 1920s toi et moi style—from Portobello Market, behind their apartment in London. “It means ‘you and me’,” Reed explains. “It’s so beautiful, as someone who travels multiple times a week for work, it serves as a reminder of us and togetherness.” When he saw Eitan down on one knee with the ring, crying, he said yes. “It felt so beautiful and serendipitous,” Reed remembers. “We just laid in the gardens until the sun set, underneath the same tree where we’d originally spoken about spending our lives together. It was really wonderful.”
The couple’s first wedding took place in March in London at Chelsea Town Hall and Claridge’s, followed by a bigger celebration in Palermo, Sicily in June. “Our Palermo-based wedding planner, Ksenia, was fantastic,” Reed shares. “You really need someone to hold your hand in this process. I wanted to bring that full Italian dream into a very queer space. I had so many ideas bouncing around; references to old films, like The Godfather.” The couple landed on the venue, Villa Tasca, after falling in love with its rich history as a monastery and private residence, as well as its frescoed ceilings. “I love things that have such a dense sense of history, especially as someone who is so into my research every season,” he shares.
Naturally, when it came to the fashion, Harris had plenty of ideas about what he wanted to wear. “I did five looks in the end across both wedding days, most of them made with my brand Harris Reed in London, and one made with the Nina Ricci atelier in Paris [where he is creative director],” he explains. “I really wanted to feel like a gender fluid bride—playing with the masculine and the feminine, so it’s a mixture of trousers that look like skirts, and trousers that are very much like suit trousers. Very sharp lapels, seventies-style suits from Savile Row.”
To walk down the aisle, he chose a particularly sentimental piece from his first-ever Harris Reed collection show at the Serpentine, which he repurposed using a vintage veil. “With the lace pouring down the back of the jacket, it really was an emblem of fluidity, of emotionally draping the body,” he explains. Next, he changed into another Harris Reed look. “It was a corseted piece that was my spin on a seventies men’s shirt dress with matching waterfall draped trousers. We call it the fluid bridal suit; we’ve done it for a lot of clients.”