Everyone knows not to wear white is reserved for a bride—but can you wear black to a wedding? The shade used to be off-limits for wedding guest attire, reserved solely for those in mourning: In the Victorian era, widows were expected to wear black for at least one year after the death of a spouse (or longer: Queen Victoria wore it for the rest of her life after the death of Prince Albert). Meanwhile, families who had experienced the loss of a parent, grandparent, or sibling did so for at least six months. Attending parties and other celebratory occasions was strongly discouraged during that period—so no one wore black to weddings because, well, if you were in black, you weren’t attending them in the first place.

By the 1920s, such societal sartorial standards had fallen by the wayside,

See Full Page