‘I Wanted to Feel Like a Gender-Fluid Bride’: Harris Reed Created Four Looks—Including a Naked Dress—For His Wedding Extravaganza In Palermo

Naturally, when it came to the fashion, Harris had plenty of ideas about what he wanted to wear. “I did five looks in the end across both wedding days, most of them made with my brand Harris Reed in London, and one made with the Nina Ricci atelier in Paris [where he is creative director],” he explains. “I really wanted to feel like a gender fluid bride—playing with the masculine and the feminine, so it’s a mixture of trousers that look like skirts, and trousers that are very much like suit trousers. Very sharp lapels, seventies-style suits from Savile Row.”

To walk down the aisle, he chose a particularly sentimental piece from his first-ever Harris Reed collection show at the Serpentine, which he repurposed using a vintage veil. “With the lace pouring down the back of the jacket, it really was an emblem of fluidity, of emotionally draping the body,” he explains. Next, he changed into another Harris Reed look. “It was a corseted piece that was my spin on a seventies men’s shirt dress with matching waterfall draped trousers. We call it the fluid bridal suit; we’ve done it for a lot of clients.”

For the dinner, Harris changed into a Nina Ricci design, as he sought to embrace his feminine side. “It was inspired by archival designs from the late 1930s, early 1940s,” he explains. “That was my Grace Kelly moment, with my shoulders and décolletage out, feeling very feminine and whimsical, with a white satin wrap around my arms, and a signature flouncy bow at the back. I felt so empowered in it.”

Finally, the after-party saw Reed reference his first-ever bridal client, the influencer Camille Charrière. “I wanted to have my Camille Charrière bridal moment,” he jokes. “For her, we created this Chantilly lace and Swarovski and glass bead-embroidered slip dress, and I wanted to have my naked dress moment and feel beautiful. It was a high-necked blouse with a full-draped cowl neck back, with my signature bootcut trousers.”

Anyone who knows Reed will be all too familiar with his love of lighting, so it’s no surprise that candles played a big part in the day. “I wanted the tables and walkways lined in candles and for it to feel really luminous,” he says. “I think lighting really makes the space and makes everything come all together.” The effect was ethereal, with the glow of the candlelight dancing on the historied walls of the Villa Tasca.

The ceremony took place in a grove of trees, the aisle lined with white rose petals. It was led by Reed’s friend and healer, Emma Lucy, who he credits with helping him with his emotions and anxiety, not least in the crazy world of fashion. As Senerman is Jewish, they incorporated some elements of his faith into the ceremony, including breaking the glass. “We took elements from so many different ceremonies and traditions to make something that was an expression of our individuality and modern-day love,” Reed explains.

Newly married, the couple returned to Villa Tasca for aperitivi and dancing, with the Champagne flowing. Then Reed threw the bouquet, a moment that he says still brings a tear to his eye when he remembers it. Next there was a candlelit dinner, with the tablescape inspired by the ones Reed used to create as a small child for his dolls’ tea parties. “I would do these very Victorian, Edwardian tablescapes, with white tablecloths and chunky candelabras, so I wanted to recreate that,” he explains. “There were no flowers, just candles. I wanted to create our own Narnia, our safe space of queer love and acceptance,” he says. Everyone was given a golden figurine of an animal that represented them as a souvenir, a nod to Reed and Senerman’s long-running joke that he is a giraffe and Senerman a shark.

“It was an experience that, I can’t stress enough, I never thought I would have,” he remembers now. “It sounds so cringy, but it felt a million, billion times more extraordinary than I can have ever imagined. I think being a queer person and walking down the aisle in a fabulous, expressive outfit, with my hair down my entire back, and seeing my husband there and looking deep into his eyes was a moment that I can probably never fully articulate.”