NEW YORK — To talk about bridal fashion trends is almost moot: Yes, there are subtle differences from season to season but, in the end, the gowns are almost always white, feminine and pretty.

A subtle shift away from floaty, ethereal gowns toward more fitted, glamorous ones — as in Vera Wang's newest collection — actually is a notable change.

"The shape I was feeling for was extremely fitted. It's not something I've been doing a lot of," Wang said.

A slinky, sexy silhouette is often easier to pull off in bridal than in everyday clothes or even eveningwear because the market for show-stopping wedding gowns tends to be a specific demographic: youthful women eager to have all eyes on them.

"It's a finite group," the designer said. "In ready-to-wear, it's from my daughters all the way up to someone who is 60 — and I'm headed in that direction myself."

Wang, 58, won the Council of Fashion Designers of America award as the industry's top womenswear designer for her ready-to-wear collections in 2005.

If the silhouette was going to hug the body, Wang said, it became important to her to make the surface details, including cabbage-rose corsages, interesting. That led to a look that seemed rooted in the 1950s and early '60s on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, though modern enough to be worn by the granddaughters of that era's famed socialites.

"Once I saw a little Jackie Kennedy in it, I knew we were heading in a very sophisticated direction. It reminded me of women who were the predecessors of Jackie: Babe Paley and the other women Truman Capote ran with," Wang said.

It's also a classic American look, Wang said. "It's sweet and racy. ... The women from the '40s to the early '60s had a polish and a thoroughbred good look. They were just to me what American glamour was about."