Gorgeous as they may be, your red-soled, sky-high heels most likely didn’t get a test run from Mr. Louboutin himself to make certain they feel as good as they look. Likewise, Oscar de la Renta probably didn’t wear your gown around the studio to ensure the bodice is both practical and pretty. Bottom line: You’re going to look like a goddess on your wedding day, but in a lot of cases you’ll have to sacrifice some comfort to make it happen.

Not so when donning a Jennifer Behr headpiece; often, the designer herself is test subject—the one wearing a headband or clip around to make sure it’s just as comfortable as it is covetable. “Every time I make something, I put it on to see if it’s wearable,” Behr says. “You can wear a heavy necklace, but if you wear a heavy thing in your hair it’ll fall out and give you a headache, and that’s about the worst thing that could happen to you.”

It’s that attention to detail that makes every piece in Jennifer Behr’s eponymous line of hair accessories a must-have item for editors, buyers and brides alike. The stunning crystal, feather and lace headbands, combs, clips and birdcage veils that come out of Behr’s Brooklyn, New York, design studio are awe-inspiring and comfortable to boot, often because the designer herself dons each piece to ensure it actually works on the head before it heads to production.

Behr studied sculpture, art history and millinery techniques in school and began her career at a tiny hat shop in Baltimore, Maryland, where everything was created by hand. “The thing I took from it is a combination of making things traditionally and also seeing the brides come in,” Behr says, explaining that the shop had a “church lady clientele” that called for custom velvet cloches with feathers and embellishment. “Working with customers directly gives you an idea of what they’re looking for, so my background is figuring out how to make things [my clients want].”

The Rise of Timeless Hair Couture

After getting her big break designing hair accessories for Frédéric Fekkai, buyers at Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys begged Behr to start her own line, and she responded by producing a collection of simple leather and silk pieces. When her fashion editor and PR maven friends started getting married, though, each requested custom pieces with a bit more glitz and glam for their wedding day, and Behr’s bridal collection was born. She’s quick to note, though, that the collections are often interchangeable, a point that blurs the line between ready-to-wear and bridal accessories. “As we got more and more into crystals and nets, most of our collection could actually be worn for bridal,” Behr says. “It’s the same style, just in a different color.”

The line today consists of seasonal ready-to-wear collections (most of which fit perfectly into a casual wedding ensemble) and a more traditional bridal line, chock-full of vintage-inspired brooches, crystallized satin ribbons, silk organza flowers and dramatic feather fascinators. Don’t expect pieces that reflect every blink-and-you-miss-it fashion craze, though; Behr’s work skews toward timeless pieces, and her wedding collection is no exception. “The wedding industry is just fantastic,” she explains, “because if you just make really beautiful things, people will respond to that idea rather than a trend. Some things in the collection are two years old because they work and they’re flattering, even if they’re not based on trends.”

Find Your Style

That’s not to say Behr discourages fashion-forward brides—in fact, quite the contrary. She loves helping brides fit a headpiece into their ensembles as a way to make a statement without sacrificing timeless style, no matter the gown. “You can use the detailing in your dress to give you the lead for what your hair accessory should be like,” she says. “If you have something with a long train, you may want that aura of romance to it. If you have a more structured dress in a satin, you’ll want something a little bigger with either a flower or crystal to balance it.” And if you’re gutsy enough to don a mini? “Go a little bit stronger on the accessories and things look formal,” Behr advises. “You don’t want to look informal just because you’re wearing a mini dress; you still want to look dressed for the day.”

Putting the collection together is often a backwards affair—Behr almost always begins with a material and figures out how to incorporate it rather than designing and seeking textiles to fit. “The materials themselves form the really basic guidelines for a great collection,” she says. “We have a whole wall of materials that we collect from places all over. I have random felt and paper that I got five years ago from Paris that I’ll use someday,” she says with a laugh.

More than anything else, though, each piece is about functionality and wearability. “It’s good to do something people will wear,” Behr says. “They’re confident that if they buy something it will look good because we’ve spent time thinking about how it’s placed on the head. We’ve experimented and tested everything in the collection to make sure it works. On your wedding day you don’t want to wear something that looks like a costume, so having something that’s well-made is important.”

(Images courtesy Jennifer Behr)