The result is a masterclass in what the Royal Palaces do best: celebrations of the British monarchy \u2013 their pomp, pageantry and performativity \u2013 delivered through the medium of clothes. It also underscores why Her Life in Style, rather than in fashion, is such an apt title.<\/p>\n
Queen Elizabeth II valued constancy, a deliberate contrast to the restless churn of high fashion. As a figure who embodied Britishness while standing on a global stage, her appearance had to resonate widely, and what read as high style in Britain could easily have seemed out of place in parts of the Commonwealth. In such a negotiation subtlety trumped bravura. <\/p>\n
The Queen\u2019s wardrobe reads like a roll call of British heritage makers: Molyneaux<\/a>, Burberry, Hawes and Curtis<\/a>, Kinloch Anderson<\/a>, Bernard Weatherill Ltd<\/a>, Philip Somerville<\/a>, and Gieves Ltd<\/a>. Norman Hartnell<\/a> and Hardy Amies<\/a> appear with predictable regularity, which will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Queen\u2019s sartorial loyalties. But the exhibition also highlights the quieter and long-enduring relationships with tailors, dressmakers and milliners who helped craft her public image.<\/p>\n For example, her dresser Angela Kelly created a style for the Queen which she favoured in her later years. As an assistant dresser, then dresser and finally called designer, Kelly was intimately familiar with the Queen as a woman long before her sartorial interventions. But the exhibition seems to reveal more about the designers, who saw the dress as the main event, than about someone like Kelly, for whom the Queen herself was always the focus.<\/p>\n What emerges most strongly is the centrality of collaboration in the crafting of her style. The Queen was not a mannequin at the mercy of designers, but a woman who presided over her wardrobe with clear autonomy and a keen understanding of the symbolism her clothes carried.<\/p>\n The exhibition opens with a brisk chronological sweep from infancy to early adulthood. The transition from baby clothes to the military ensembles worn during her late teenage years make plain how abruptly she was thrust into public service. <\/p>\n Here, however, as is the case throughout, the curators favour the makers over the meaning. The garments are beautifully displayed, but the interpretive text often stops short of probing the \u201cwhy\u201d behind stylistic shifts and choices. For instance, the Queen\u2019s later\u2011life preference for a straighter silhouette is asserted but not explored, a missed opportunity given the exhibition\u2019s ambition to chart a life through her style.<\/p>\n The exhibition curation borrows liberally from recent V&A fashion blockbusters to great success. Most notably the double\u2011decker display technique used to kaleidoscopic effect in Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto<\/a> and the circular and tiered arrangements of Dior: Designer of Dreams<\/a>. In Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style a double-stacked rainbow wall of colour\u2011blocked coats and suits is visually striking but also underscores the sameness that defined the Queen\u2019s wardrobe.<\/p>\n That said, individual garments indicate occasional moments when she embraced stylistic choices that felt markedly more daring, such as a First Nations jacket that she wore with an evening dress in 1970. The exhibition makes clear, however, that once her style was set in the 1950s, evolution was subtle and nuanced rather than flamboyant or bold.<\/p>\n Her sartorial consistency seems to have become a kind of representation of national reassurance: a stability of taste, of choice of makers, and silhouette across a near century of life defined by political and social change.<\/p>\n The contributions by Erdem Moral\u0131o\u011flu, Richard Quinn and Christopher Kane, who have produced contemporary reimaginings of the Queen\u2019s style, are well executed but ultimately redundant. Her fashionable legacy speaks loudly enough without reinterpretation.<\/p>\n Meanwhile navigation through the exhibition can be challenging. The King\u2019s Gallery becomes a rabbit warren of narrow corridors and bottlenecks, exacerbated by the otherwise informative audio guide that slows foot traffic to a crawl. Still, the text panels are excellent \u2013 clear, concise, and often illuminating \u2013 and the overall display is both attractive and thoughtfully arranged.<\/p>\n The final room is a crescendo of encrusted and bejewelled gowns, which almost, but not quite, overwhelm the coronation dress. It is a fittingly theatrical conclusion, a reminder of the Queen\u2019s ceremonial presence and the role fashion played in projecting it.<\/p>\n Even in death, she seems to transcend mortality here. Despite the diminutive stature of the mannequins proxying the royal body, her physical and ceremonial presence evoked through her luxurious couture gowns feels mighty. <\/p>\n The exhibition has arrived at a moment when an evocation of her popularity and a celebration of the British royals is needed for their brand now more than ever. Public appetite to celebrate the woman who represented an untarnished royalty \u2013 which now seems more remote than ever \u2013 is clearly voracious judging by the queue outside the exhibition. In this setting, even as the nation moves on, her reputation has settled into a rich and celebratory one.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the exhibition succeeds not simply because it dazzles, but because it reveals Queen Elizabeth\u2019s harnessing of the soft power of clothing in shaping a public life. Through tweeds and tiaras, coats and coronation gowns, the exhibition charts a life defined by duty, diplomacy, and an unwavering sense of self, expressed always through fashion.<\/p>\n Hannah Rumball-Croft does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Britain\u2019s longest\u2011reigning monarch, and one rarely out of the public eye since childhood, Queen Elizabeth II left behind a wardrobe so extensive and meticulously archived that the curators at Historic Royal Palaces have had an embarrassment of riches to draw upon for a new exhibition at the King\u2019s Gallery in Buckingham Palace. Queen Elizabeth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Public service, personal style<\/h2>\n
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