Photographed by Hunter Abrams
Tonight in New York City, supermodel and singer-songwriter Karen Elson married art collector and curator Lee Foster at Electric Lady Studios, the music studio founded by Jimi Hendrix and where the groom is now a managing partner. Earlier this week, Vogue accompanied Karen—along with her father, Jimmy, and daughter, Scarlett—to the Valentino atelier in midtown Manhattan and documented the special family affair that was her emotional final wedding dress fitting.
Months before setting foot into the atelier, the bride—who was discovered as a model at age 16 in Manchester and now has over 50 magazine covers to her name—wrote a love letter of sorts to Valentino creative director Alessandro Michele asking him to create her wedding dress, the first ever produced by the designer for the house. “I’ve known Alessandro for many years, and I knew his touch would be so dreamy and magical and very me,” Karen says. “I wrote to him asking if he would make me a wedding dress and be a part of this special time in my life. Lucky for me, he happily agreed.”
At that point, Michele was still relatively new to his position. “It was very early days for him at Valentino, so we had several Zoom meetings with my friend and stylist Leith Clark,” Karen explains. “She helped piece the vision together to create my dream dress, but overall, the process was quite simple. Alessandro is incredible, and he knows me very well, so the dresses he presented were all beautiful. We tweaked a few things here and there—the process was heavenly!”
When Karen arrived at the atelier on Thursday to try on the dress and make any potential final alterations before her wedding day, she couldn’t wait for the big reveal. “Should we do the wedding dress first—and get to the exciting part?” she asked before a Valentino associate slid back doors revealing her beautifully embroidered tiered confection of a gown behind them. Karen clapped her hands together with joy and gasped “I’m going to cry!” while smiling from ear to ear.
After stepping out of the changing room in her dress, Karen modeled the custom piece for her daughter and father as well as the Valentino and Vogue teams. “I am not a girl who wants to be uncomfortable in clothes. That’s what I do for a living. This is precious cargo!” Karen said, admiring the garment’s intricate embroideries. “We talked about having a pop of color—would it be a green or a yellow?” she recalled. “And actually, I was like: ‘It should be a pop of blue somewhere,’ for the traditional ‘something borrowed, something blue.’”
The end result is a full-length dress in embroidered white silk illusion tulle, lined with a layer of light georgette. The celestial blue and ivory embroidery includes beads and shards, while the bodice has a tulle cape with bell sleeves, and the skirt—which is smooth at the waist—opens to flare at the bottom and has an embroidery of raised ruffles joined together on the sides. Finally, the sash at the waist is tied in a bow at the back and features a bouquet motif with flowers—petals and stems—in silk entirely made and painted by hand in the shades of the embroidery.
“Karen and I have known each other for many years,” Alessandro says. “She is an extraordinary person to whom I am very close and that I love very much. She is not only a great interpreter of 1990s and 2000s fashion, but an artist. She was the honoree of a show that I am very attached to—my first cruise collection in New York. For me, she is kind of an angel, and having made her wedding dress is my lucky charm.”
Karen’s own kismet moment happened in the fall of 2022 when she went on her first date with her now-husband Lee. “A couple of friends played matchmaker and suggested we go on a date so that’s exactly what we did,” Karen says. “Enough people we’re saying it that we thought maybe we should go on a date.” In the fall of 2023, Lee surprised Karen with a proposal in upstate New York. “He called me and my brother [Henry Lee White] and asked if it was ok if he proposed to my mom while they were upstate,” Scarlett remembers. “And obviously we said yes because we love him.”
“We had just gotten the keys to our beautiful farm upstate,” Karen says. “And as we were walking through this magnificent property, Lee surprised me by getting down on one knee and proposing. He was very sneaky as I wasn’t expecting it at all—it was the most beautiful moment.”
The couple planned two small wedding ceremonies—one in Nashville, Tennessee, that took place this past August and one in New York City. As both Karen and Lee have specific tastes—and wanted to celebrate their shared passion for music—it was incredibly important to the couple that the wedding be held on the roof of Electric Lady Studios, which Lee acquired in 2010—thus beginning a new chapter for the former playground of Jimi Hendrix, and a legendary axis of the music industry. (Adele, Daft Punk, Lady Gaga, and A$AP Rocky have all recorded there, while in recent years, it has attracted a new mythos as Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey’s studio of choice.) “He’s put his heart and soul into [Electric Lady],” Karen says of Lee. “It’s really his home.” When it came to the wedding itself, however, Karen turned to her friend Brenna McKamey-Kennedy to take charge and connect the dots. “She was the wedding planner extraordinaire,” Karen says.
Tonight, at 7:00 p.m., Karen walked down the aisle at Electric Lady Studios to the song “True Love Will Find You in the End” by Daniel Johnston. Karen’s daughter Scarlett served as the only bridesmaid, and wore a custom Valentino slip dress in ivory silk, lined in a light stretch silk georgette. The bodice was created in a chantilly lace to form small ruffles at the neckline, and satin ribbons in celestial blue were sewn in to create small straps. (The groom, meanwhile, wore a suit by Hedi Slimane for Celine.)
Even if Karen’s dress was made by one of the world’s most esteemed designers—and one of her closest friends—tonight’s true importance lies in the opening of a new chapter of the supermodel and singer-songwriter’s life. “I’m also excited to have so many people from both of our lives in one place,” Karen says. “This is the one time when we actually get to enjoy being celebrated.”
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
