How Brigitte Bardot Was a Stylish Bride 9 Times Over

Though audiences flocked to the theater to see Brigitte Bardot in various states of undress, the curvaceous and pouty-lipped star managed to make a lasting mark on fashion beyond the itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikini. As Jacques Esterel, the machinist turned designer who Bardot put on the map says: “When she puts on a dress it starts something.”

Ironically, it was the bridal market on which sex kitten Bardot would have the greatest fashion impact. The dress that will forever be associated with the French star is a demure lace-trimmed pink-and-white gingham (Vichy check) shirtdress designed for her second wedding, in 1959, to the impossibly handsome French actor Jacques Charrier, which was copied endlessly (and, in fact, was referenced this spring in the latest Brigitte Bardot x La Redoute fast-fashion collection.)

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The short, summery, ultra-feminine dress was both unconventional and influential—as well as completely distinct from much-married Bardot’s real-life and movie wedding looks. The latter were conventional ingénue and princess numbers. When she married husband number three, the German playboy and industrialist Gunter Sachs in Las Vegas, a barefoot Bardot wore a casual minidress that was the polar opposite of the dress she designed and wore to her first wedding, in 1952 to Svengali director Roger Vadim. Bustled, high-collared, and accessorized with a muff, it had a Belle Époque silhouette and all the romance of a Marie Laurencin painting.

But back to the demure, girlish gingham number. Its impact was enormous because “Bardolatry” was built upon more than Bardot’s ample bosom. As well as being the ultimate sex symbol, Bardot represented youth, which in France, and in fashion (over which the exclusive, labor-intensive haute couture was just beginning to lose its grip in the early sixties to more accessible off-the-rack boutique modes), was a relatively new concept, new enough, that Esterel saw fit to comment on it in a 1960 interview that gives an intriguing and intimate glimpse into Bardot’s tastes and shopping habits:

"She isn’t easily influenced," Esterel told a wire reporter. "Usually she comes in alone, sits down on the floor—I don’t know why, but she detests chairs—and examines my whole collection. What are her tastes in clothes? Very plain fabrics. . . . She generally selects dresses with molded bodices, very small waists, and full skirts. They suit her. She isn’t hard to deal with. She has only one peeve—waiting for her dresses to be made. To avoid waiting, she often walks in here and takes a dress right off one of our models. However, we don’t mind."

In the sixties, Bardot paved the way for the off-the-rack, no-fuss, leg-exposing bride. And, remarkably, she managed, to adopt a distinct wedding style for each of her real-life and on-screen weddings (at least ten by our count, nine of which we feature here). When one looks this amazing, why not step up to the altar once again? So cue the Mendelssohn, and enjoy BB’s many fashionable trips down the aisle.