Have you ever fancied yourself a royal stylist and think that you could take charge of a royal wardrobe? You can now test your royal styling skills! Historic Royal Palaces has digitised over 500 items from the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection on Google Arts and Culture. You can view coronation pieces, ball gowns, and even a possibly dangerous gown.
Dress Codes, a new exhibition focusing on royal fashion, opened at Kensington Palace this year. If you are not able to make it there, you can still view some of the pieces included and more from the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection.
The Queen Mother’s coronation toile from 1937 has been shared in fantastic detail, with the embroidery mocked in pencil with gold paint. Red threads show where changes and alterations were later made.
A Catherine Walker gown known as the “mermaid gown” has been shared in the online collection. The late Diana, Princess of Wales wore the sea-green, sequined gown first for a 1986 State Visit to Austria and rewore it several times after. Walker “devoted a large part of her time and business to designing for the Princess”, and is still a favourite designer of the new Princess of Wales.
The digitised collection includes one of Queen Alexandra of Denmark’s dresses from 1894. It bears the hallmarks of Alexandra’s style- the high neckline and the incredibly cinched-in waist. However, it also is somewhat dangerous.
The then-Princess of Wales was still in half-mourning following the death of her oldest son in 1892, and as such her wardrobe featured many mauve and purple pieces like this particular gown. The garment was died with methyl violet, a notoriously unstable dye, but purple was so popular that many ignored the risks.
Safety might be something you want to add to your to do list if you try your hand as a stylist. You can enjoy this online royal wardrobe here.
