In a way, the 1930s ballroom at the Dorchester Hotel stands for every traditional ballroom in every super-luxury hotel in every city: venues for happy family celebrations, weddings, receptions, anniversaries, award ceremonies, what-have-you the world over. It was the perfect choice of a place for Richard Quinn to make his point about how his business has grown—quite hugely—to embrace women who come in need of formal, outrageously glamorous dresses. “The collection was really about the art of event dressing,” he said, “but also associating memory with clothes.
So this was really about creating clothes that people will cherish over time. Being entrusted to make people’s wedding dresses is an amazing thing, for me, for us.” The grandeur of the pre-show scene was an event in itself—a party packed with Richard Quinn’s international clientele, all a-sparkle in their poufs and ruffles and oversized flower prints .
Quinn, always the host with the very most of London fashion, can never do things by halves: before he dressed the show, he dressed the ballroom. An intense bank of white hydrangeas and orchids by Philip Hammond flanked the runway. Chandeliers glittered against the black-draped room.
And behind the audience were positioned the English Chamber Orchestra and Choir, ready to perform soaringly emotional classical adaptations of songs with a personal meaning for Quinn. Summer seasons are about weddings, of course. What the haute couture has always done in Paris.