When Gemma Sort Chilvers first tried on her wedding dress from The Own Studio , she immediately fell in love with the minimalist silhouette. “It was elegant, had an ease to it, but [was] still bridal,” she recalls of trying on the drop-waist silk gown, featuring a full skirt and train. The stylist and daughter of shoe designer Penelope Chilvers – who got married in Spain’s Costa Brava, near her family home, in September 2023 – had her heart set on the style, partly because she knew she could rewear the dress beyond her big day.
“I thought, ‘This would be so cool in another colour,’” the bride says. “I already had it in mind that this wasn’t going to be a one-off dress.” A few months after her wedding, Sort Chilvers started looking for someone to dye her dress – but struggled to find many services available.
Eventually, she came across Nicola Killeen Textiles , which specialises in creating costumes for TV, film, theatre and ballet. “I had to really twist their arm to do it for me,” she explains. “Obviously, a wedding dress is expensive, really sentimental, and things can go wrong in the dyeing process.
” Luckily, the stylist had some spare fabric for sampling, after taking the dress up to get rid of the train. “I’m so glad I was able to test it because the pink I originally chose was actually a bit brighter than I had envisaged,” she says. “We tested [another sample] with the correct colour, saw that the dye took really well, and then just went for it.
It came out amazingly.” Sort Chilvers was so pleased with the final result – a baby-pink shade inspired by Gwyneth Paltrow’s 1999 Oscars dress – that she couldn’t wait to wear the dress again at the first opportunity: her friend’s wedding in Sicily, where many of the other guests recognised the gown. “They did a double take and were like, ‘No way – is that your wedding dress and you’ve re-dyed it?’ They thought it was amazing,” says the stylist, whose now husband Jake also rewore his wedding suit for the Italian nuptials.
The stylist already has plans to re-dye the dress black for her 40th birthday, and perhaps a red colour in between, if the dye will take. “I think I can get a few more years [out of the] pink, and then my plan is definitely to go for black and a midi [length],” she says. “[I’ll have it in] black as my forever chic piece.
” Unsurprisingly, a growing number of brides are now looking to rewear their wedding gowns after their big day, a factor that eco-minded brands are now taking into account during the design process. “Re-wearability is something that’s hugely important to us and our brides, so we predominantly work with fabrics that can be dyed afterwards, or silhouettes that can be easily adapted,” Rosie Williams and Jess Kaye, co-founders of The Own Studio, explain. Since unveiling her newly dyed wedding dress, Sort Chilvers has had plenty of friends seeking her advice on how they can transform their own gowns.
Her top tips? “Make sure the dress is a shape you’re able to rewear again, or look at where you can alter it,” she notes. “And make sure you’re able to test the fabric before going fully in with the dress!”.
