A wedding dress doesn't have to end up in the wardrobe: Keira Knightley, Emma Stone and three other famous women wore theirs again

For many women a wedding dress is something worn once and then kept for years in a plastic bag, "as a keepsake". Five famous women decided otherwise - their wedding dresses came back on the red carpet, at parties and at festivals.

Keira Knightley married James Righton in May 2013 in a simple ceremony in Provence. She didn't buy a new dress: she wore one she had already worn to a pre-BAFTA party in 2008 - short, above the knee, ballet-style, designed by Karl Lagerfeld. In December 2013 she wore it once more, at the Serious Fun Children's Network gala.

Emma Stone married Dave McCary in secret in September 2020, so nobody saw the wedding dress. For the post-wedding party she wore a made-to-measure dress by Nicolas Ghesquière, then creative director of Louis Vuitton, whose ambassador she has been since 2017. Two years later, at the 2022 Met Gala themed "In America: An Anthology of Fashion", she wore that very dress in 1920s style, covered in sequins and feathers - and earned rave reviews.

Liberty Ross married Jimmy Iovine on February 14, 2016, at David Geffen's mansion in Beverly Hills. At the wedding itself she wore a black vintage Givenchy Couture dress with a veil and a black headpiece, and at the brunch the day before - a cream silk vintage Dior with a draped neckline, bias-cut panels on the hips and a short train. About two weeks later she wore that Dior to an Oscars after-party.

Troian Bellisario married Patrick J. Adams in December 2016 in a forest by the California coast, in a bohemian dress by Spanish brand Cortana and a flower crown. At the 2020 Golden Globes she wore the tulle skirt again, with a beige strappy top. Spanish actress María Castro married José Manuel Villalba in September 2018 in an Aire Barcelona dress with a halter neckline and a voluminous skirt, and later changed into a Hoss Intropia design - which she went on to wear on several occasions, including the opening of the 2021 Málaga Film Festival.

This is more than a Hollywood anecdote. If the dress was beautiful enough for the altar, why shouldn't it be beautiful enough for the next big night? How many wedding dresses never saw daylight again after the big day? Maybe the best keepsake isn't the dress in a box, but the dress that gets worn.