Hello everybody!

Again, this is Stela, Miss Dee’s loyal friend/photographer. While Miss Dee is on maternity leave, me and our friend, Ivna, will try to fill the gap as best as we can. This is our first post, so bear with us, we have some big shoes to fill… Well, here it goes!

Fall is slowly coming, and we are moving from the beach towards the interior of our home town. Lucky for us, there is a ancient town named Salona (dating back from the 2nd century before Christ) not even 20 minutes by car from Split (More about Salona in one of our future posts!). For any lover of history, especially Roman and Greek history, this is truly a jewel! You can encounter a wide variety of architectural styles and see an unique mix of elements from different religions that were prevalent at different time periods. All of this, in just a few kilometers of space. One cannot help but be transported 1500 years back, when the city was bustling with life.

As a special treat, Ivna took her mom’s wedding gown, a Grecian inspired black dress made from pure silk and jute (yeah, you heard it right! What an incredible combo!). Of course, it fit perfectly with the surroundings. Let’s take a look at the dress:

Nice hairdo, with snakes as an accessory. Gotta love the old Romans, they sure had style!

How the “hood” looked like in the year 100 AD.

Fun among the columns 🙂

Just chillin’

Two cute angels!

Ah, the eternal black and white combo, with an angel detail.

And of course, the accessories:

Roman style sandals, very popular today

Greek inspired jewelry, also very popular today.

Brace yourselves for more bracelets 🙂

Greek-roman style of wardrobe has been “in vogue” for a very, very long time. While they were never worn as the usual everyday style, greco-roman inspired gowns were very popular on the party circuit and even as wedding dresses. It’s easy to see why – the long, natural fabrics, belted in all the right places, were very flattering to women, and combined with braided hair and some jewlery, gave of an ethereal, almost magical vibe. They evoked the images of Greek goddesses, especially the seductive Aphrodite (the goddess of love and beauty – known as Venus in the Roman mythology), and were very comfortable to wear.

This is how famous artist Sandro Botticelli envisioned Venus in the 15th century. Notice the garments Venus is wearing (not quite Greek, they are more in tune with the 15th century fashion, but you get the picture!). We can imagine many renaissance ladies dressed like this during their famous masked balls.

Let’s take a look at some of the Greek-Roman inspired gowns from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries:

How to make your very own Greek gown, late 19th century edition!

Greek style wedding dresses from the 1920s

1930s evening gown by US designer Eta Hentz 

A Madame Grès 1960s gown

Elie Saab 2013 gown

Zac Posen gown from 2013

Zuhair Murad gown

Now, I have to go back to wedding gowns, and not just any wedding gowns, but BLACK wedding gowns. It total contract to the traditional white gown, it is a bold, almost shocking choice, but that never stopped stylish women from wearing them before, right? While the color is more connected to mourning than happiness, when did with elegance and style, the black wedding dress can make quite an impact (and guaranteed, nobody is going to forget what wedding dress the bride wore!) Here are three very interesting examples of black wedding dresses done right:

Catherine Deneuve

The doyenne of style for more than 5 decades, this stunning french actress married her first and only husband, famous photographer David Bailey, in 1965 in this très chic black dress. Bon, Catherine, bon!

 Sarah Jessica Parker

Even before her tenure as the ultimate style icon, Carrie Bradshaw, SJP was breaking fashion rules, and it is nowhere as clearly illustrated as in her choice of wedding gown. Can’t say this isn’t a incredible gown. The mix and match of fabrics – the combined simplicity of the upper part and the total baroque of the lower part is pure art. The lucky guy is Matthew Broderick, of course. Great!

Shanae Grimes

What can we say? Like, like! Tulle is a material that can do no wrong in our book! The dress is funny, flirty and seductive, most certainly not easily forgotten. And her groom, Josh Beech, looks simply dashing!

Last but not least, this is how Ivna’s mom looked like on her wedding day 🙂

That’s all for now! Hope you enjoyed our first post, and we give you a fitting song, connected to Venus, the goddess of beauty and love.

Kisses XO XO

STELA and IVNA