“Alla fine, scegli sempre l'amore.”

Summer 2010

I have spent the last couple of days racking my mind about what kind of piece I wanted to write for you for my next entry. My birthday was coming up and I knew I wanted to do something that would celebrate that. Maybe a sneak peek in to the wonderful carnival themed party my sister had planned, or a look back at my favourite outfits over the last twenty-seven years. I spent hours staring at a blank word document, but my mind kept taking me back to one place; to one subject. My life, and my career, is based around my openness. I’ve always had an open-door policy when it comes to sharing whether it was in interviews or via my blog. However, there is a subject I have always shied away from discussing, until now. My relationship with Oliver Farrington.

This post has been therapeutic to write in so many ways for me. I have been able to let go of the past and take a large, step forward. With that being said it was also quite raw and incredibly hard to write.

I get asked a lot about a certain dress within my collection. The Love, Bella xo. I designed this dress as an open apology to Oliver. As many of you will know, Oliver and I were engaged to be married back in 2012 but what you won’t know is that I was the reason that the relationship ended. I left Oliver the morning of what should have been our wedding. A decision I both do and don’t regret which I will dive into later. I don’t justify my decision. Leaving a man, or a woman, literally at the alter is a cruel and selfish thing to do. It’s humiliating, and I wrestled with the demons of that decision for years after. Love, Bella xo was a one of a kind piece I crafted based of the dress I was due to wear that day, something even Oliver himself is unaware of. I chose the name using the nickname that only he had ever used, Bella.

Oliver was able to make me feel like I could explode with a thousand different emotions at any given moment. Our arguments were volcanic. We could spend hours screaming at each other with the occasional glass, or photo frame launched across the room. On the other end of the scale I had never felt more known, or more protected then when I was around him. I loved him before I even knew the intensity of what that word could carry. He was oxygen to me, I needed him to breathe.

They say that you never forget your first heartbreak. Mine came in the shape of a pregnant ex-girlfriend. The odds had already been stacked against us. He was after all older than me, an employee of my parents and the best friend of my sister’s recently deceased boyfriend/ her ever growing best friend. He was the definition of out of bounds and forbidden. If I was being honest with myself I hadn’t payed much attention to Oliver since he began hanging around my sister. My own life at the time consisted a lot of sneaking out and partying with my friends. It was only when I came home from a night out and woke Oliver from the middle of a nightmare that our relationship began to change. A few stolen moments in the dark whilst cuddled up together on my parent’s kitchen floor quickly became Oliver taking my virginity during my families annual Halloween party. It didn’t last. Oliver found out that his ex-girlfriend, the one who he left to be with me, was pregnant and he quickly made the decision to return to her. It was the right thing for him to do. He would not have been the man that I fell in love with if he hadn’t chosen to stand by his family.

Every year my family fly to France for a holiday in the cabin that my mother’s family owned. It was a gorgeous log cabin in the middle of a snow-covered forest. I remember how furious I was that my mom had gone ahead and invited Oliver and his girlfriend to join us. It was meant to be us, not watching them together. There shouldn’t have been any good in goodbye yet there was, we were unable to stay away from each other through out the holiday. After Oliver knocked out a bartender for kissing me, we ended up spending the night together in my bedroom. We called it our proper goodbye to justify the fact his girlfriend was a sleep in the room next doors. We didn’t see each other properly for months after that night in the cabin. A few awkward and tense encounters.

May 2017.

Heartbreakingly so, his girlfriend lost their baby and quickly after that their relationship ended. Oliver returned to me, as he said the person he knew he was meant to be with.

It was really good for a while after that, even with Oliver returning to the army for a short period of time our relationship seemed to be growing in strength. He proposed at my favourite restaurant on Valentine’s Day. It was beautiful and memorable, not only because my whole family caught us in the throws of passion and got to see more of Oliver than they probably ever expected to see. I was happy. We were in love and planning the wedding of my dreams, or at least his mother’s dreams.

What I hadn’t been aware of was that my sister Imogene had sent a portfolio of my drawings to a fashion house in New York and they loved them. They offered me an internship the morning of my wedding. I sat in my bedroom, in my wedding dress, and cried. All that was going through my mind was the France trip a few years before. He had left me so easily in the past, would he do it again? I was starting to doubt his love for me. What if somebody better came along? What if he fell out of love with me? What if I wasn’t enough? I knew I loved Oliver but, in that moment, it wasn’t enough. This was bigger than him or our life together. My dream was being handed to me and I had to decide. I chose me. I chose my career. As Imogene made her way to the church to effectively break his heart, I headed for the airport and boarded a plane to my new life.

I didn’t just live with my own loss and regret for years. I also had to live with the disappointment of my family. I have never seen my fathers so angry with me and I have done quite a few despicable things in my past.

As my career blossomed, and I know what you’re thinking the runway bride who specialises in wedding dresses, Oliver went on to marry and have a beautiful son. It was like a fresh wave of heartbreak. The final nail in the coffin that was once our relationship that I may have hammered in there myself. We saw each other from time to time with each becoming worse and more awkward than the last. I coped by throwing myself into highly publicised relationships. When I heard the news that his wife was pregnant, and that Oliver was becoming a father I flew to Vegas and apart from the hangover that followed two days later, I don’t remember much more. I had broken my own heart in the pursue of success. I’m incredibly lucky to lead the life that I do. I am honoured, and I am blessed to have so many people worldwide that follow my work and are passionate about my life. However, I had sacrificed Oliver for that.

In 2017, I returned to New Haven after my sister asked me to design a dress. The catch was that the bride happened to be Oliver’s sister in law and a dress created by myself was the request of his wife. I was ready to pack my bags and head back to New York until I saw the look in his eyes. There was no fighting or denying it. It was like we had gone back in time and no matter how much we tried we gravitated back towards each other, with more passion and fire than before. A few days before Christmas Day, I called Oliver out on his feelings. I felt like I was suffocating every time that I was around him and my only intention had been to clear the air. Our conversation and near kiss was recorded by my niece and played out on the TV screen for all to see, which resulted in the end of his marriage.

It has been a messy few years. It has been passionate and intense and full to the brink with loss, sorrow and heartbreak. What counts were the times between. The times that we got to love and laugh and cherish one another. I guess the moral of me telling you this story is always choose love. If you have somebody in your life that would lay their own down to love and protect you don’t take it for granted. Don’t make the same mistakes as me. Hold on to love. Nurture it.

I’m the lucky one. Not only did I get to return to my love, we can now announce with full hearts that we are expecting our first baby together.

I can't wait to take this journey with you.

Love, always.

Isabella xo