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Would You Wear a Wedding Dress Made of Disposable Paper? These 1960s Brides Donned Them to Save Money—and Make a Daring Fashion Statement
Created with synthetic textiles, the “nonwoven” gowns could be shortened for the reception or easily packed away for the honeymoon
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Disposable paper dresses enjoyed a brief vogue in the turbulent late 1960s, when young people literally wore their politics and interests on their sleeves—but were prepared to discard them as easily as a piece of Kleenex. So-called paper dresses were actually made of high-tech, flame-retardant synthetic textiles with unromantic names like Kaycel and Dura-Weve; manufacturers euphemistically dubbed them “nonwovens.” As Life magazine observed in 1966, “From any casual distance, it does not look like paper at all—but more like cotton fabric. … It rustles slightly in motion but no more audibly than taffeta.” The simple A-line silhouettes and straight sheaths fashionable at the time lent themselves to flat planes of paper. Lightweight and easy to slip into an envelope, paper dresses were tailor-made for mail-order shopping.
Originally developed for hospital gowns and lab coats, nonwovens were quickly fashioned into frocks advertising everything from candy bars to Campbell’s soup. These wearable marketing devices soon became canvases for more political and personal statements. During the 1968 presidential election, candidates distributed paper dresses bearing their portraits and slogans as campaign swag. Graphic “poster dresses” displayed bold Op Art designs or Day-Glo florals. Textile designer Marcelle Tolkoff told the New York Times in 1967 that paper “has given designers a new lift. You do things with paper you wouldn’t dare with regular fabrics.”
Commercial paper manufacturers like the Scott Paper Company and DuPont produced these dresses first, but garment industry gurus like fashion designer Ossie Clark, textile designer Julian Tomchin and the Lord & Taylor department store soon began experimenting with the “throwaway” styles, too. From the United States, the trend spread overseas, with paper companies in Europe issuing their own versions.
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Paper clothing was especially popular for special events like school dances and beach vacations. Some designers released paper childrenswear and mommy-and-me fashions; Trans World Airlines briefly dressed its air hostesses in paper uniforms customized for each of its long-haul routes. As syndicated fashion columnist Helen Hennessy observed, paper dresses “are the perfect answer for the girl who needs that one-occasion dress and wants to be adventurous in her choice of design without going broke in the process.”
Helen Jean, a curator at the Phoenix Art Museum who organized the 2021 touring exhibition “Generation Paper: Fast Fashion of the 1960s,” says that paper dresses caught on because they were “unique, disposable, customizable and youthful.” They could be altered, personalized or repaired quickly and cheaply with scissors, glue and tape—no sewing skills required. At a time before fast fashion and “diffusion lines,” which offer designer looks at a more affordable price point, they made runway trends accessible to teenage budgets. They weren’t just trendy, but also futuristic: Life declared them “the answer to laundry in outer space.”
Earthbound women, too, appreciated the labor-saving potential and packability of these “convenience fashions,” as manufacturers described them. They were promoted as being environmentally friendly—though Jean points out that “they were absolutely the opposite. You couldn’t recycle them in any way.” Their flimsiness and fragility reflected the relaxed sexual mores of a rapidly changing culture.
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Those same cultural and clothing revolutions affected marriage rites. As women gained the right to vote and entered the workforce in the early 20th century, they became less dependent on their husbands for financial support and legal protection. Free love replaced wedded bliss in the feminine aspirations of the late 1960s. Many women postponed marriage or rejected it altogether; divorce rates skyrocketed. At the same time, wedding gowns fell out of step with contemporary fashion. Not only did they retain outdated accoutrements like trains, lace and veils, but they were also increasingly purchased to be worn only once, rather than doing extended duty as a bride’s “best” dress.
If marriage was just a piece of paper, then the bride’s gown could be one, too. “The ultimate disposable gown must be the paper wedding dress,” the Australian Women’s Weekly declared in 1967. “Why not? You only wear it once, anyway.” The magazine featured a daring bridal ensemble of Kaycel pulp fiber that designer Elisa Daggs had presented at a New York bridal show. It was “short enough to show more than a glimpse of ruffled knee pants at the front, though it rounds off into a big circular train at the back,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “A huge candy box paper bow is its headdress.”
The made-to-order dress cost $35 (around $335 today)—a hefty increase from Daggs’ usual price point of $6 to $8 (around $57 to $77 today) for paper dresses and beach clothes, but a bargain compared with a traditional wedding gown from a couture house or a department store. “Paper’s future is in these less frequently worn clothes,” the designer told the Women’s Weekly.
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That same year, James Sterling Paper Fashions introduced a paper wedding gown in a more traditional silhouette: a full-length sheath with a bateau neckline and short, puffed sleeves. The Los Angeles Times praised its “rather elegant simple lines” and $15 price tag (around $144 today). Some paper weddings gowns advertised their novelty and disposability with far-out silhouettes or conspicuously crafty details like appliqué or crepe-paper floral embellishments—such as the one London art student Louise Miller made for her August 1968 wedding, complete with a detachable hood and a multicolored paper muff instead of a veil and bouquet. But Sterling’s version could be mistaken for a pricier (and sturdier) fabric gown.
Beyond their novelty value, paper dresses offered younger brides with “more dash than cash” a big-ticket purchase at an affordable price. None other than London couturier Norman Hartnell, who made Elizabeth II’s wedding gown, praised the trend in his syndicated fashion column, writing, “Women spend far too much on them for, let’s face it, they’re generally worn only once. … Think of all that money a bride could save.”
At her 1968 wedding in Wisconsin, Joyce Wrasse wore a $40 dress made of Pro-Tem, a rayon and polyethylene nonwoven fabric, by Chicago fashion designer Jita Merson. The bride, a university student, carried a bouquet of paper flowers and wore a nonwoven coat for her going-away outfit. The money she saved on her trousseau paid for a sit-down wedding breakfast for 100 guests.
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Cost wasn’t the only consideration. Paper gowns could be easily shortened to miniskirt length to wear as a reception or getaway dress. At Wrasse’s wedding, “the organist … had hardly finished playing the Mendelssohn ‘Wedding March’ when the new Mrs. Richard Stelter grabbed a pair of shears,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “She snipped two feet off the bottom of her Grecian-style wedding gown. Presto: an instant cocktail dress for the reception.” No hemming was required; the nonwoven fabric wouldn’t unravel. Stetler’s bridesmaids wore Merson’s $23 paper gowns, which they, too, shortened for the reception.
Flat-pack fashion had the advantage of being easy to transport to destination weddings as well. When Toronto-based Hazel Cathcart got married in her English hometown in 1968, she chose a paper dress because “it was much easier to bring on the plane,” her father told the Birmingham Evening Mail. Her two sisters wore yellow paper bridesmaids gowns.
The bride-to-bin fashion fad showed remarkable durability. On February 18, 1969, an unusual paper bridesmaid gown that could accommodate the whole bridal party appeared in a disposable fashion show in New York. The scalloped sheet of yellow paper had openings for four heads and eight arms, accessorized with paper headbands, gloves and a paper bouquet. While it is unlikely that this dragon-like dress ever made it down the aisle, it certainly made headlines.
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Paper dresses were not made to last more than a couple of wearings—much less ’til death do us part. And that was the point. “Today’s Dolly Girls are not as sentimental over keeping dresses as their mothers and grandmothers,” a Liverpool, England-based paper dress manufacturer explained in 1969. Nonetheless, two identical bridesmaid gowns of DuPont’s Reemay—a spun bonded polyester resembling a dryer sheet—in a colorful, impressionistic floral pattern with empire waistlines, divided skirts, long sleeves and zippers at the center back have survived. According to their labels, the garments may be “washed a few times and need no ironing.”
By the end of the decade, though, the novelty of paper dresses had worn off, and paper wedding and bridesmaid gowns were losing popularity to another budget bridal alternative: romantic, ruffled, ready-to-wear dresses by Laura Ashley and Gunne Sax. Inspired by Victorian and Edwardian fashion, their pretty floral prints and ultra-feminine silhouettes offered brides (and their attendants) affordable and nostalgia-saturated alternatives to the mainstream wedding fashions of the day. Meanwhile, the handcrafting revival spurred by the 1976 Bicentennial of American Independence (which renewed interest in Colonial pastimes like quilting, spinning and weaving) and the burgeoning environmental movement inspired many women to sew, knit or crochet their own wedding gowns at a fraction of the cost of buying off the rack.
More recently, contemporary fashion designers and textile artists like Morana Kranjec, Jum Nakao, Bea Szenfeld and Annette Meyer have rediscovered the paper dress as a sculptural and sustainable choice for both brides and those simply seeking a new look. Embellished with hand painting, laser cutting or origami folds, these three-dimensional works of art may be more expensive than their mass-produced 1960s counterparts, but they’re also recyclable, meaning they can be tossed as effortlessly as a bouquet after the big day.
