Global Cool » Wedding Dresses

All white on the night: Dress to impress at your own royal wedding

rita — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:08:19 +0000

By Rita Alves

Kate and Wills’ engagement has been the talk of the town for months now. What dress will she choose? What will they eat? How far will Prince Harry go with his best man’s speech in front of the Queen? And we’ve been very impressed by how much the lovely couple care about their environment. So with the wedding only a few days away we’ve got the best tips for your own (eco-friendly) wedding. Today we show you gorgeous dresses and sparkling jewellery…

The dress
So we’ve seen Kate’s sister snooping around Alice Temperley recently and everyone’s wondering if Kate might go for a Temperley dress too. To help you find inspiration for your big day and look gorgeous as you make your way down the aisle we picked up some beautifully and immaculately designed wedding dresses.

For those who appreciate old-fashioned ideas with a haute couture touch, the Tammam’s fashion house is the ideal place to go. The dresses are so simple that they exude effortless chic. This beautiful dress (right) is just an example of a stunning range of simply elegant, inexpensive gowns, using sustainable fabrics.

If meringues and over-the-top veils aren’t your thing don’t worry. For a more modern wedding, Blushless designed a dress that is the essence of romance. They sell a some lovely post-ceremony dresses, like this short and strapless dress that is covered in white love hearts (pictured). The collection was inspired by David Lynch’s ‘Wild at Heart’ and has some wonderfully unique pieces to make you a truly individual bride.

The suit
Don’t worry boys we haven’t forgotten about you! In all the wedding planning and drama sometimes a man can feel pretty detached. Escape the madness and spend some ‘me’ time finding the perfect suit. Nora Sotamaa has an innovative collection of cutting edge and traditional suits. This unusual combo (pictured) is from the Monochrome collection and showcases how ethical fashion is very, very cool.

The rings
Saying ‘I do’ doesn’t have to bring back memories of crying over the movie Blood Diamond. We can help with eco-friendly ways of picking your wedding rings.

Be smart and brilliant with simulated diamonds. Brilliant Inc is full of glittering trinkets that are eternally flawless and will fool even the sharpest eyes. Impossible not to die for!

Share your ideas on how to organise a Global Cool wedding in the comment box below…

Apps in Public: Prince William gets married in Speedos?

emily — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:01:25 +0000

By Emily Rycroft

Our guide to the best iPhone apps for making you just that little bit greener…

Dress the Royals- 59p

With only a few days to go until the royal wedding we really are moist with excitement. So we decided to give you a right royal App of the Week, to help you get really involved in Kate MIddleton and Prince William’s big day. The WeAreApps’ Dress the Royals app allows you to make the royal family look as wonderful or as wonderfully ridiculous as you fancy for Wills and Kate’s big day. From frog costumes to underpants, choose from over 40 beautifully illustrated outfits and accessories for the biggest wedding of the year.

Apps In Public inspires you to leave the car at home and take public transport for longer journeys around the UK. Find out more here.

Seen a better app? Tell us about it in the comments box below or on Twitter @global_cool…

Model behaviour at the train station

emily — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:20:37 +0000

Ethical fashion. At a train station. What’s not to like?

Last week, London St Pancras station was invaded by Tammam’s roving eco-couture catwalk. Commuters and Traincationers were treated to a stunning display of their latest designs.

Tammam produces ethical, organic, sustainable, eco-friendly and elegant wedding gowns and couture pieces. And what better place to show them off than the starting point for Traincations to Europe. Check out this video of the dazzling show…

Did you see the show? Tell us all about it in the comments box below…

How to have a wedding on a (Royal) shoestring

liberty — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:51:18 +0000

By Liberty-Belle Howard

Unless you’ve been living in some kind of media-free bubble for the last few days, you’ll know by now that Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement on Tuesday, and that they intend to get married in spring or summer next year. If you think Kate’s ring looks somewhat familiar, it might be because William proposed using his mother’s old engagement ring. Not only is this romantic, it also suits us just fine here at Global Cool – we’re all for reusing, recycling and re-purposing.

In this age of recession, deficit and budget cuts, the Royal Wedding is going to have to be a relatively scaled back affair – Prince Charles’ wedding to Diana in 1981 cost about £30million by today’s prices, and whilst William and Kate’s will undoubtedly be a massive event, it’s likely to cost a fraction of that price. So why not make it eco-friendly at the same time? The couple have already got off to a fantastic start with their recycled engagement ring, and here are some other areas they could make their wedding sustainable without losing the royal fairytale feel.

The Dress
Some suppliers make wedding dresses from sustainable and ethically produced materials, as well as sourcing and making things locally. Kate could have one of these dresses specially made for her to ensure that she gets the perfect wedding dress, or alternatively, there are loads of gorgeous vintage wedding dresses out there – and you don’t necessarily have to trawl through charity shops to find them. There are boutiques around that specialise in vintage wedding dresses, which can then be altered to suit your measurements or style. Much more chic than buying something off the peg! If any of the wedding guests are worried about having a wardrobe full of clothes but nothing to wear, a visit to London Frock Exchange might be in order, to get a perfect, nearly-new dress.

The Jewellery
The Royal Family is bound to have loads of lovely jewellery lying around so Kate won’t have to buy new, and the couple might like to use vintage wedding rings, or even new rings made from recycled gold.

The Food
Kate’s brother James runs a cake company, so they may call on him to bake them a wedding cake if the need arises, but there are plenty of bakeries and caterers that will make the couple a wedding breakfast and cake using organic, fair-trade and locally sourced ingredients.

The Flowers
As with food, it’s easy to find a florist that will supply you with local, seasonal flowers instead of flying things overseas. Their flowers will look fresher than if they’d been lying in a cool-box on a plane, and local flowers will add to the quintessentially English feel that every good Royal Wedding needs. A florist would also be able to provide them with dried petals to use as confetti: easily biodegradable and far more bird-friendly than throwing rice.

The Venue
The obvious choices for the ceremony are Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s Cathedral, but for the reception it would be nice if William and Kate did their bit by hiring a charity-owned venue, where all profits will go to a good cause. The National Trust has some great venues in London that the couple could use, and to cut down on car-use between ceremony and reception, how about travelling by horse-and-cart? We’d love to see them on a bike, personally, but that might not be very befitting of the future King and Queen. However, we’re sure they’ll be checking out our Traincation page for honeymoon inspiration…

Christmas Pant Odyssey

Global Cool — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:58:33 +0000

When I suggested to my wife that I wanted to see her in a pair of recycled knickers, she suggested that her next husband would be far more reasonable.

At best, the very notion of recycled pants was tangled with some kind of kinky wife-swap at best. At worst, there was probably an image of me in the loft dressing up in my mother’s wedding dress and pouting into the polished lid of a biscuit tin.

She’s clearly missed the point. Not about me and the dress, of course (what a man gets up to in the privacy of his loft is his own business), but about recycled clobber. This Christmas, the whole recycled clothes thing seems to have kicked into gear, and suddenly, there’s rack upon rack of clothes that you’d actually love to see people in for sale. You just need to know where to look.

Top of my list is www.greenknickers.org: a site that sells unique, hand-made undies that are created from recycled materials and produced ethically. I know. Many of you reading this will think that the words ‘pants’ and ‘ethically’ go together like ‘tedious’ and ‘uncomfortable’. Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see your partner parading round in a pair of their Forget Me Not knickers [http://www.greenknickers.org/php/selected.php?Submit.x=70&Submit.y=71&rn1=5], all organic cotton, ribbons and feminine charm. And they do men’s pants too, more classically styled boxers than hessian gussets – worth a check.

For even more of a range, I’ve been surfing through what’s tipped as the hottest recycled fashion boutique site there is: Goodone has featured in all the style supplements and creates new designs from old fabrics, remaindered stock and even off-cuts. They manage to mass-produce their designs, which means you know exactly what you’re getting – and they get to soak up all the fabric that’s normally treated as waste. Check out their designs here: http://www.goodone.co.uk – cut up, directional and wearable.

It’s good to see that when it comes to clothes shopping for your partner, there’s sustainable stuff being brought to market that’s actually cool, with a distinctly cheeky edge. A bit like me in a pair of my mum’s pants, in fact. Now that’s another recycling story.

Ed Chipperfield