This dress was worn by May Pittman for her marriage to Sidney Herbert Clements on June 25th 1916, the day before Sidney was sent to the front. The colour blue was more unusual than white for a wedding dress, however, blue is known as the colour of ‘true love’ and so was not an uncommon choice. The dress is an early example of the use of rayon, known as 'man made silk' which although invented in the 1890s, was not used widely until after the war. The V&A has very few examples of wedding dresses from the WWI period and relatively few survive as dresses were often re-worn or recycled during wartime. The dress is a fashionable choice for 1916 and shows the movement towards the looser, shorter, less structured dresses of the 1920s although there are still remnants of Edwardian fashion in the lace trim, high neck and full length sleeves.