Brides say `I do' in organic frocks

SHE RECYCLES her newspapers, eats only organic and always buys a copy of the Big Issue. And now she can get married in an eco-friendly wedding dress.

In the ultimate statement of political correctness, a dress which looks just like the traditional white model but is made from a mix of organic and natural, unbleached, undyed fibres has been designed by a German textile company, Hess Naturetextilien.

And after use it can be passed on to another ecologically minded bride- to-be rather than spending the rest of its life in the back of a cupboard.

One of the company's aims in designing the dress was to demonstrate that hemp, a rough fibre from the cannabis plant which was banned from commercial production in Britain for 32 years, could be transformed into a sophisticated fabric.

The hemp was woven with Chinese silk under conditions overseen by the company and the design was completed with cotton lace trim and a cotton under-dress provided by organic growers in Turkey, who are paid a premium for hand-picking the crop and using natural predators to protect it.

More than 200 German women have said "I do" in the costume, or, to be exact, one of the 65 dresses made for the initial launch. Indeed, the elevation of rationality over romance has cut the number of dresses that need to be made by more than a third.

The dress will be exhibited at the Design Museum in London as one of 12 shortlisted entries for the Design Sense competition, aimed at promoting better use of resources.

Emotions have sometimes got the better of ethics, however. The dress is produced only for hire but some women who happily signed on for the one-day wedding dress then discovered that they didn't want to give them back after all.