guipure

Guipure comes from the French verb guiper, meaning to wrap or to cover with thread or silk. The word originally referred to a gimp — a heavy thread or cord wrapped with silk. Guipure lace was lace made using these guiped threads, and eventually the word came to mean any lace in which the motifs are connected by thread bars (brides) rather than by a net ground. The absence of net is the defining feature. Guipure lace is a connected pattern floating in space.

Italian, Flemish, and French lace-makers all produced guipure in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Venetian gros point, the heavy raised needlelace that was the most expensive textile in seventeenth-century Europe, is technically guipure — its raised motifs are connected by brides, not by mesh. A single collar of Venetian point could cost as much as a small house. The lace was so valuable that sumptuary laws attempted to restrict it to the aristocracy.

Machine-made guipure appeared in the nineteenth century. Chemical lace — a technique where a cotton pattern is embroidered onto a dissolvable fabric, which is then dissolved in acid or chemical solution — produces a guipure effect industrially. The motifs are connected. The ground is absent. The visual result is similar to handmade guipure, though the hand can tell the difference. Machine guipure is stiff and uniform. Hand guipure has the slight irregularities of human tension.

Modern bridal fashion has given guipure its largest contemporary market. Guipure lace wedding dresses — with bold floral motifs and visible skin between the patterns — have been a major bridal trend since the 2010s. The word guipure appears in bridal magazine descriptions more than in any other context. A seventeenth-century luxury textile, once restricted by law to the wealthy, is now sold on bridal websites at every price point.