Memories of grandparents
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Grey, the colour of purity
She married dressed in grey, in an age that cared more for substance than for appearance: the story of Mrs Angiolina.
Mrs Angiolina is a woman with beautiful grey eyes and, on her face, the marks of someone who has worked hard all her life. She comes from a small village near the Po, given over mostly to farming, where the land marks your face and your hands, where there is no room to relax or amuse yourself but the farming seasons set the rhythm of the days. A very poor life, plain and austere, like that of many peasants of the lowlands.
One day, as she showed me a photograph of her husband, I asked her about her wedding and what it had been like back then… how she was dressed, where she had gone for her honeymoon.
Today we take it for granted that a wedding means a church ceremony with flowers matched to the bridesmaids’ dresses, a banquet with many guests, perhaps in a fine villa, and, without fail, the bride in a beautiful white gown — the colour that symbolises virginity and purity.
It is not unusual to hear of people who marry in church solely in order to wear the white dress. The search for the gown has become a fashion in its own right, made of shops and endless fittings, as well as a sizeable item in the budget of the ceremony.
Grey, the colour of purity
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Mrs Angiolina, by contrast, told me that in her village the custom was for both bride and groom to dress in grey for the wedding. New clothes — she is keen to point out — but grey: probably the cheapest cloth they had in the village. A colour well suited to the times, an age in which people cared more for substance than for appearance.
Sometimes ostentation comes even through a white dress.
Mrs Angiolina also told me that in her little village one person had married in a beautiful white dress: she was the richest woman in town… Commenting on it, she said to me: “what an injustice — could she not have dressed like the rest of us? There has always been injustice in the world, sadly!”.
It gives pause that this episode stayed with her so vividly that she still remembered it sixty years later. Sometimes ostentation comes even through a white dress.
I like to picture Mrs Angiolina’s wedding like this: hand in hand with her husband, stepping out of a little country church, both dressed in grey, with the sun lighting up her eyes. Happy eyes, grey like her dress.
Collected by Riccardo Beretta · AVO Concorezzo volunteer