Fashioning a Reign: 90 years of style from the Queen’s wardrobe

Excellent exhibition at Buckingham Palace showing clothes from throughout the Queen’s life.

The Palace need to rethink their exhibition space and how they manage flow through it. Because all visitors go to the show as well as seeing the house they are dealing with very big numbers with mixed levels of interest in the items on show. There is a lovely big room to start but it gets full quickly and most of the people in it are unable to get a good view of the display or read the labels. If you really want to see the exhibits you have to queue up at each one which gets very tedious.

Anyway moan over! I loved the fact the show started with an outfit from nearly every decade of the Queen’s life including her christening gown and the beautiful dresses she and her sister wore to their father’s Coronation. As with most of the displays each outfit was shown with a photo of her in it and in all cases they looked much better on her and animated.

There was a nice section on her uniforms and discussing how male uniforms were adapted for her. Also a good section on clothes for overseas visits, showing evening dresses designed to flatter the host country in their colours and symbolism. One corridor showed a lovely display of hats and told you about the various hat designers over the years.

It was great to see iconic outfits including her wedding dress and the Coronation dress but also ones that we remember from major events viewed on TV like that for the investiture of the Prince of Wales, the Silver Jubilee outfit including the hat with bells down the back and from just a couple of years ago the “Good evening Mr Bond” outfit from the Olympics.

Closed on 2 October 2016.

 

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