Celebrating Handmade: Parachute wedding gowns

As part of a celebration of all things handmade, I would like to regularly feature a post or article about craftsmen and women who create one-of-a-kind items: whether it's intricate and elaborate, simple and heartfelt, reflects a long tradition or is quirky and unique. In our era of mass-produced fast fashion and disposable culture, it's often easy to forget there is a real person and talent behind these amazing items!

This week: parachute wedding gowns?

Months ago I came across a FaceBook post about a woman who had made a silk wedding gown for herself out of her soldier-husband's military parachute during World War II. If there isn't anything more romantic than that, I don't know what is. 

Smithsonian National Museum of American History 

Major Claude Hensinger was forced to bail out of his aircraft in August 1944 and both he - and the parachute - survived. He later proposed to his girlfriend Ruth, who took the dress to a local seamstress and had her make a Gone With the Wind-inspired bridal gown out of the material. In those days, many materials - including silk - went straight to the war effort, so fancy fabric was in short supply. The couple married in 1947, and since then two other brides have worn the gown before it was donated to The Smithsonian. 

Not surprisingly, there are many other examples of parachute wedding gowns that survive the war and some dire circumstances. 

Jewish bride Lili Lax used her war-time cigarette rations to pay a seamstress to sew her wedding gown, made from a parachute that her fiancé had obtained from a former German airman in trade for "2 pounds of coffee and cigarettes." After her miraculous survival from a number of concentration camps, she met her husband Ludwig, in 1945, and together they and their daughter arrived in New York in 1948. After Lili's wedding, she sent the dress to dozens more brides for their special day.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Accession Number: 1999.7.12. a