Fall Wedding Guest Dresses, Sorted by Fabric

Fall Wedding Guest Dresses, Sorted by Fabric

Wedding season no longer ends in September, so the guest dress has had to grow sleeves. Autumn weddings ask for weight and coverage without tipping into black tie, which is a narrower brief than it sounds. This edit is sorted by what the dress is made of, because in fall the fabric is doing most of the talking.

Long sleeves

The sleeve is the single fastest way to make a dress read autumn. It solves the church, the barn and the drafty tent at once, and it has the side effect of making a simple shape look considered rather than borrowed from summer.

Velvet, satin and jacquard

Fall is when texture takes over from print. Velvet, satin and jacquard all catch low evening light, which is why they keep reappearing at October weddings while chiffon quietly waits until June.

Autumn colour

Burgundy, chocolate, rust and forest have become the unofficial uniform of the season, largely because everyone got tired of pastels and nobody wants to wear black to a wedding. The colour does the seasonal signalling so the silhouette can stay plain.

Our honest take

Guest dressing goes wrong when people dress for the season instead of the venue. Check the light and the floor before the fabric, because satin in a field and heels on cobbles are the two mistakes that repeat every autumn. If you take one thing away, pick the dress you can sit down in for three hours.

Shop brands in this edit

Shop Self PortraitShop RetrofeteShop ZimmermannShop Ulla JohnsonShop L'AgenceShop Leo LinShop Nana JacquelineShop Sau Lee

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