King Charles and Queen Camilla have arrived at a fashion exhibition honouring Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace ahead of what would have been the late monarch’s 100th birthday.
The couple are attending the exhibition, ‘Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life In Style’, at the Royal Collection Trust held at The King’s Gallery.
The exhibition features more than 300 of the Queen’s items, many displayed for the first time.
It is described as the ‘the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of the late Queen’s fashion ever mounted’ and includes her christening robe, bridesmaid dress, and wedding dress.
Elizabeth’s Coronation dress, the ensemble worn for the wedding of Princess Margaret and the outfit she sported to pretend to jump out of a helicopter at the 2012 Olympics are also on show.
The exhibition displays the different fashions adopted by Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, showing her styles over the ten decades of her life.
Curator Caroline de Guitaut said: ‘In the year that she would have turned 100 years old, this exhibition will be a celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s uniquely British style and her enduring fashion legacy.’
It is running from April 10 to October 18 and is described as shedding ‘new light’ on her ‘close involvement in the creation of her wardrobe’.
The exhibition features some uniquely personal pieces.
There is a specially-designed maternity evening dress created to elegantly disguise what would be the future King Charles III in 1948, a pair of check trousers she wore privately on estates such as Balmoral and Sandringham and a remarkable see-through 1960s plastic coat that none of the curators can even find a photograph of her wearing.
The Royal Collection Trust team, led by de Guitaut, Surveyor of the King’s Works of Art, were given full run of Queen Elizabeth’s 4,500 piece-strong wardrobe, which was carefully conserved throughout her long and extraordinary life.
It forms a remarkable display – 18 months in the making and the largest ever devoted to the late Queen and her clothes.
The first few weeks of the exhibition ‘Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life In Style’ have been a sell-out.
The late monarch, de Guitaut concedes, was not a woman obsessed with fashion, but after finding herself hailed a style icon became determined to make it work as a tool of her trade.
‘Queen Elizabeth took a deep and thoughtful interest in every aspect of her wardrobe, using fashion as diplomacy while consistently championing the UK’s fashion industry,’ she said.
Among the exhibits are Elizabeth’s breathtaking wedding and coronations gowns, including, for the first time, the fan she used in 1953.
Her wedding gown is reunited, for the first time in more than 20 years, with the glittering Queen Mary’s Diamond Fringe tiara.
There are eye-catching items, too, such as the Queen’s ‘poodle skirt’ worn for a square dance in Canada, an extraordinary embroidered coat and matching slippers which she wore in Malaysia in 1989 and a purple dress that actually conceals, extraordinarily, a pair of culottes.
A maternity evening dress made by Hartnell, dating from around 1948, is a rare example of its type. De Guitant says she was ‘very excited’ to have found it and that the tailoring is so clever that from the front you wouldn’t even have known she was pregnant. ‘It’s quite a rare survival,’ she says.
The display of evening gowns and day dresses for State Visits and banquets is almost overwhelming, many featuring specific colours or national symbols in honour of the countries she was visiting, as well as accessories from her many tours over the years including binoculars, sunglasses and suitcases.
The Queen was apparently very much involved in the process of creating her outfits, examining sketches submitted to her and commenting back on the silhouette, or sleeve or skirt length.
‘The Queen would want to see the fabric samples too, she was absolutely insistent on having at her fingertips every single piece of information about how this finished garment might look,’ de Guitaut explained.
‘She became an active master at dressing in a very appropriate way, paying compliments to the host country, honouring the craftsmanship of the place she was visiting.
‘The wearing of this wonderful couture on the global stage was really the greatest possible advert for British production, design and manufacture.
‘She took diplomatic dressing to a whole other level of sophistication which no other monarch had really done to the same degree. She was a trailblazer.’
King Charles will address the nation tomorrow to mark his mother’s birthday.
Charles has reportedly penned personal reflections on what he considers his mother’s greatest achievements.
This will be accompanied by a touching video montage of poignant moments from her life played on screen.
That is expected to include footage from her service during WW2 in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, memories from royal tours around the world and duties at home, and moments from her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022.
Charles is said to have invested considerable time curating the list of invitees to the reception, prioritising representatives from organisations and charities with which his mother formed deep connections.
