A Closer Look At Bella’s Chic Italian Wedding Dress In The Gentlemen Season 2

Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of iconic wedding dresses on TV – especially on Netflix, which boasts a wardrobe of gowns from Bridgerton, Queen Charlotte, The Crown and now, The Gentlemen. That’s right, the latest instalment of Guy Ritchie’s upper class gangster series debuts its first wedding, with duke-turned-drug lord Eddie asking his new love interest Bella (played by Italian actress Benedetta Porcaroli) to be his wife. The result? A huge Italian wedding on the shores of Lake Maggiore. And while the setting was certainly perfect, it was the bride’s gown that had us truly in awe. Loulou Bontemps, costume designer for The Gentlemen, fills us in on how she found the perfect wedding dress for Bella.

How Costume Designers Found Bella’s Wedding Dress For The Gentlemen Season 2

True to her character, Bella is the epitome of an Italian bride. Walking up the church steps, she glides forward in a long-sleeve, floor-length silk satin gown, a hand-laced veil pinned to her hair and, trailing alongside, her dramatic train. As she turns away from the audience, we’re greeted by the final touch: a fully open back to contrast with the modest neckline at the front.

Benedetta Porcaroli as Bella in The Gentlemen season 2 (c) Netflix

It’s easily one of the most stunning wedding looks we’ve seen from streaming giant Netflix in a while (the last being Sophie’s regency bridal moment in Bridgerton earlier this year). But it took a lot of planning from the creatives behind The Gentlemen. Speaking exclusively to C&TH, costume designer Loulou Bontemps explained how the process was a completely clean slate for her: ‘I got married some time ago, but I didn’t get a proper wedding dress – I just put on a lovely green wraparound dress and got married at Camden Council very quickly, during the pandemic. So this was really my first big wedding dress fitting for a character, and I knew what I wanted. Guy [Ritchie] and I had many a chat, and we really wanted that Godfather vibe, that Italian mafioso vibe,’ she explained.

But putting those inspirations into practice quickly threw up a few challenges in the fitting room. ‘I thought she was going to be head to toe in lace – a huge lacy veil, lace up her neck. I had a beautiful Brigitte Bardot reference and some incredible dresses. I was like, “Oh my god, that’s the look.” But then when I put Benedetta in that dress, it just didn’t look right at all.’

Bontemps and Porcaroli underwent a lengthy fitting process to find the right look for Bella, which led to plenty of laughter-filled moments behind the scenes. ‘We had the most hilarious wedding dress fitting, where I think I had about 20 different wedding dresses in total,’ she told C&TH. ‘It was so bizarre, because a dress looks like one thing when it’s hanging up, and then you put it on her and she’s like, “Oh my god, I look like a 12-year-old girl, this doesn’t look right, let’s try something else.”’

Theo James as Eddie and Benedetta Porcaroli as Bella in The Gentlemen season 2 (c) Netflix

There were also more practical boxes to tick off, too. ‘We also had to really consider what scenes we were going to see her in with this wedding dress – what is she actually going to be doing in it, how is the DP [director of photography] going to be lighting it, the colour palette of the set that the production designer has done. When you start taking that into consideration, you pay attention not just to the style of the fabric, but the texture of it.’

But luckily, 20 dresses and plenty of giggles later, the duo found Bella’s dress. ‘We put that dress on – and it’s just a silk satin column, just hugging her figure and draping off in the most elegant, beautiful way, and the light just bounces off it in all the scenes,’ she recounted. ‘We just knew, the moment she had it on and we pinned it all, we were like, “Yeah, this is it.” In the end, it only took one fitting – albeit quite a long one. Benedetta’s very chill, and I’m very organised.’

The veil was the finishing touch the look needed. ‘We had this beautiful bespoke veil made,’ said the designer. ‘There’s a scene where she’s coming down the staircase to meet Susie, and when we were shooting it I was like, “Oh my god, this looks so good, she looks divine.” That’s when the magic happens.

‘She’s naughty, and a little mischievous, but also incredibly full of love – that’s Benedetta herself, but also the character, Bella.’

Benedetta Porcaroli as Bella in The Gentlemen season 2 (c) Netflix

Where Did Eddie & Bella Get Married?

The wedding itself is set in Italy, in a sprawling village that climbs up the side of the Alps. The real-life location, just off the shores of Lake Maggiore, is Verbania, a lakeside town in northwest Italy.

The cast and crew of The Gentlemen had just a handful of weeks to film all of their on-location scenes – which included Eddie and Bella’s wedding, which was set in a real church: Chiesa di San Leonardo. But it took a little bit of convincing to get permission to film there, says production designer Martyn John.

‘We had to ask permission from the priest, and he said, “Yes, you can film in my church – provided no one dies.” A bit of a tricky ask for The Gentlemen,’ he recently told C&TH. ‘I was like, “How are we going to know if someone dies or not?”’

And once permission was granted, it was a case of pulling out all the stops as fast as possible. ‘We had a window of about two days to get the church ready, really, really quickly,’ he says, adding that they really leaned into the setting when choosing decorations. ‘I brought florists over from London – we used a lot of silk flowers, made in a warehouse, and transported them to Italy the day before. I wanted it to feel really Italian, so I brought olive trees into the church.

‘It was just a lovely thing to do. You don’t often get to do weddings on TV, but when you do, you can really explore and make it more fabulous than you’d normally be able to. It was wonderful.’

WATCH

All episodes of The Gentlemen season 2 are now streaming on Netflix. netflix.com