Women of the British royal family have long sent messages through their clothes, up to the present day with Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle. Some of those messages are decoded in a new exhibition at Kensington Palace called Dress Codes, which runs from March 13 to November 30.
The exhibition “looks to decode royal dressing over the past centuries by taking a look at designs, details, and the making of a soft power look,” WWD reported. Everything from “little anchors on the buttons of a red Catherine Walker suit” to the “delicate mauve brushstrokes on a long ‘half mourning’ gown” and the “zipper fly on a pair of tartan trousers” are up for dissection, including articles of clothing from Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret, and Princess Diana, who lived much of her royal life in Kensington Palace, where the showing takes place.Princess Diana.
WWD reported that the 34 pieces in the show were pulled from an archive of more than 10,000 items in the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, housed at Hampton Court Palace. “They may be few, but those pieces speak volumes about history, psychology, and semantics,” the outlet wrote.
“One of the key things about royal dressing is that while it may look glamorous, it’s clothing that’s doing a job,” said Historic Royal Palaces curator Matthew Storey, per the outlet. “It isn’t like normal dressing.”
One of the pieces Storey chose to display was a long, red, beaded Bruce Oldfield dress that Diana wore while on a royal tour of Saudi Arabia in 1986.
“This design would have been carefully considered, taking into account the country’s climate and culture, and occasion for wearing it,” Storey said.Princess Diana’s 1986 Bruce Oldfield gown she wore to Saudi Arabia, on display at the “Dress Codes” exhibition.
The gown was among 17 dresses sold at auction at Christie’s in 1997, the year of her untimely death. The auction raised $3.2 million for HIV, AIDS, and cancer charities. “This is her working wardrobe, and she put it to work one last time by selling [it] for charities she cares about,” Storey said, per The Telegraph. “This is something she did as well in her lifetime. She put these clothes on mannequins, sold copies of the catalogue, and put them out into the world.”
The sparkling dress is displayed next to a Harris Tweed jacket from the 1970s that Diana wore when she was younger, and is named “Althorp” after Diana’s ancestral home as a result.
Other outfits of Diana’s on display include a Catherine Walker suit worn to a 1984 christening of the P&O Cruise Liner, the Royal Princess. There are also outfits of others outside members of the royal family in the exhibition, including a black dress, cape, and hat that Vivienne Westwood wore for her investiture at Buckingham Palace.
“I didn’t want just to show the clothing worn by royals or courtiers,” Storey said.Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in 1977.
Items from Queen Victoria’s wardrobe (specifically a mourning dress) also feature in the exhibit, which includes matching childhood dresses of sisters Elizabeth and Margaret from the 1930s; examples of Margaret’s “boundary-pushing” style; and a tartan suit from the Duke of Windsor, who was King Edward VIII when he abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson. The exhibition looks into the messages those who are in the royal family and those who are visiting the royal family convey through their wardrobe, “the unwritten ‘codes’ of power dressing and the many factors that go into deciding what to wear abroad, such as climate and culture,” The Telegraph reported, adding that the exhibition took three years to put together. The exhibition also featured the help of young people from the ages of 14 to 17 who served as Young Producers for the display.
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