What's the oldest item in your wardrobe? A year? A decade? How about 120 years old?
Abigail Kingston, from Pennsylvania, has well and truly won the vintage game after becoming the 11th bride to wear a wedding dress first worn by her great-great grandmother in the 1920s. It's now 120 years old, and still looks incredible:
OK, so it didn't look like this when she first got her hands on it - the Victorian-era silk satin gown required plenty of reconstructive work, including repurposing and replacing the sleeves, which 'looked like rags' and over 200 hours worth of restoration work by bridal designer Deborah LoPresti's salon.
'It's not just the dress that's been handed down,' explained Leslie Kingston, Abigail's mother. 'It's the love.'
The amount of work put into it is hardly surprising when you consider that the dress has only been dry-cleaned once in its lifetime, and has been constantly patched up and extended with lace to fit the different shapes and sizes of the 11 brides. Unsuprisingly, the dress is now pretty fragile, so the bride will only be wearing it to the cocktail reception after the actual wedding - but still, we can't think of a more hard-wearing piece of clothing.
'It is a magical wedding dress because she is the 11th bride to wear it,' Leslie said. 'Who would think anything would last that long?'
See a slideshow of pictures of the dress here.
