The dress also features decorations based on another form of ‘pink’.  Zig-zagged and scalloped cutwork is called pinking.   It combines a Medieval word meaning to punch or prick, with ‘pink’: just like the frilled petals of the dianthus family which also named the colour. These days we use the word in this form in ‘pinking sheers’.  

This week’s Rate the Dress is extravagant, and over-the-top, and oh-so-Victorian (by which I mean it’s channelling at least four other timeperiods and using five different kinds of trim or fabric manipulation).  

This layered, ruffled, feathered, embroidered, appliqued and lace trimmed wedding dress was worn by a New Zealand bride, 26 year old Tui McKinnon, to her June 1920 wedding.