A Gown of History

In honor of the coronation of King Charles III, looking back at his mother’s ceremonial gown: “The Story Behind Queen Elizabeth II's Dazzling—and Highly Symbolic—Coronation Gown”…an article by Emily Chan for Vogue. [reprinted below]

As preparations were underway for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953, Her Majesty only had one couturier in mind to design her gown for the historic occasion: Norman Hartnell. The British dressmaker had of course created her beautifully embroidered wedding dress—made from duchesse satin that the Queen famously purchased with ration coupons—for her marriage to Prince Philip in 1947.

“One October afternoon in 1952, Her Majesty the Queen desired me to make for her the dress to be worn at her Coronation,” Hartnell recalled in his 1955 autobiography, Silver and Gold. “I can scarcely remember what I murmured in reply. In simple conversational tones, the Queen went on to express her wishes. Her Majesty required that the dress should conform in line to that of her wedding dress and that the material should be white satin.”

Soon afterwards, Hartnell submitted eight designs to fulfill the brief, the first of which was based on Queen Victoria’s coronation gown—a white satin dress with gold embroidery. Other sketches featured the Tudor rose and oak leaves, alongside one design based around the Madonna. Elizabeth opted for the eighth design, which incorporated the national emblems of the United Kingdom: the rose (England), thistle (Scotland), shamrock (Northern Ireland), and daffodil (Wales)—although the latter was changed to the leek, the official national emblem of Wales.

The Queen requested several other modifications to the design, including that the embroidery be done using pastel-colored silks, rather than just silver. Her Majesty also asked for national symbols of Commonwealth countries to be added, including the acacia (Australia), fern (New Zealand), maple leaf (Canada), protea (South Africa), lotus (India), and wheat, cotton, and jute (Pakistan).

The finished coronation gown featured a sweetheart neckline and a delicate lattice design, with the emblems—decorated with seed pearls, sequins, and crystals—separated by heavily embellished scalloped borders comprising gold bugle beads, diamantés, and pearls. Hartnell also included a surprise for Her Majesty: a four-leafed shamrock on the left side of the skirt as a symbol of good luck.

All in all, the coronation dress weighed a hefty 30 pounds, or 13 kilograms, which combined with the Robe of Estate—which was made of deep purple velvet and an ermine trim, and took 3,500 hours to make—and St Edward’s Crown, was quite the weight for Her Majesty to bear. To finish off her historic outfit, the Queen asked French shoemaker Roger Vivier to create a pair of gold pumps featuring a jewel-encrusted heel and fleurs-de-lis pattern on the upper that matched the motif on both St Edward’s Crown and the Imperial State Crown (worn at the end of the ceremony). When it came to her jewelry, Elizabeth wore a dazzling diamond necklace and earrings that were originally made for Queen Victoria.

A long-time repeat wearer, the Queen actually went on to wear the Coronation gown a further six times, including at the opening of parliament in New Zealand and Australia in 1954. It’s an attitude towards fashion that the late monarch has certainly passed down to her son, King Charles III, as he is crowned at Westminster Abbey on Saturday.

A Once Shimmering Wedding Gown Lost at Sea

“If it was worn as a wedding dress,” explained the Museum of Kaap Skil in the Netherlands about an extraordinary vintage gown on display, “the bride would have been the dazzling centrepiece of the marriage ceremony.”

All brides want to have a lovely ‘glow’ on their wedding day, but the gown of this particular bride in question is from the 17th century and was lost at sea for 350 years. More from the museum:

“At first sight, this appears to a brown-coloured gown [image above] but this would not have been the original colour. The dress was most probably made of lightly coloured silk (possibly white or cream) and the whole surface was covered with silver decorations. These consisted of small silver discs woven into the silk in the shape of love knots.”

“With the woven silver discs and embroidered patterns of silver thread it must have been, literally and figuratively, a dazzling dress!”

Painting of Anne of Denmark
by John de Critz the Elder that shows
 the silhouette of 17th century gowns...
the shape of the shipwrecked treasure!

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To learn more of the story, this from Ashley Strickland of CNN: 

In 1660, a ship carrying a treasure trove of luxury goods sank off the coast of Texel, the largest island in the North Sea.

Nearly four centuries later, little remained of the wooden unidentified Dutch merchant ship. But as the silt and sand covering the wreck washed away, broken chests began to appear in 2010. Four years later, divers retrieved the chests and brought them to the surface.

Inside were remarkable objects, the likes of which had never been seen before, according to researchers at the Museum Kaap Skil in the Netherlands, where the exclusive collection of items are on display.

The chests were full of clothing, textiles, silverware, leather book bindings and other goods that likely belonged to people from the highest social classes centuries ago.

Some of the most stunning items include two virtually intact lavish gowns — a silk dress and another one interwoven with pieces of silver that was likely a wedding dress. Few textiles or clothing from the 17th century remain preserved today, and it's even more rare to find them in shipwrecks because fabric decays so quickly.

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Click here for a seven-minute video of museum experts speaking about the two gowns found in the shipwreck.

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Wedding scene from Outlander

For more on shimmering wedding dresses, visit my webpage from 2016 featuring the 18th-century era gown created by Outlander costume designer Terry Dresbach for Claire Randall to wear for her wedding with Jamie Fraser. (Hint: bits of iridescent mica were woven into the fabric to catch the candlelight!)

Every Day is Women's Day

If there was ever a time to champion and empower feminine values—solidarity, true relatedness, care, compassion and the unique overwhelming power arising from the intensity of love—now would be the time...to benefit all humankind. 

-Patricia Albere

Founder of Evolutionary Collective

Made-for-Hollywood Fairy Tale

The wedding gown of famous brides—especially ones about to become a princess—often becomes the centerpiece of the fairy tale remembrance, even more than the wedding ceremony or the couple themselves. It's a memory and an image that we keep returning to...well past any whiff of a once "fairy-tale" romance!

Recently, Vanity Fair magazine returned to the iconic gown of Grace Kelly in Fawnia Soo Hoo's article, "Why Grace Kelly's Wedding Dress Embodies a Made-for-Hollywood Fairy Tale."

With sublimely intricate details, like seed pearls accenting needle lace motifs and a pleated silk faille cummerbund atop the skirting, Grace Kelly’s wedding-dress style continues to be interpreted—even by royals and celebrities—over six decades later. “The reason Princess Grace’s wedding gown still resonates today with so many brides has at least as much to do with who wore it, as the dress itself. The design is lovely and timeless, but the way the dress sits at an intersection of Hollywood and royalty makes it particularly evocative and very much an aspirational fantasy piece for many brides,” says Lorenzo Marquez, author, podcaster, and cofounder of fashion and culture website, Tom + Lorenzo.

 “Kate Middleton was particularly smart to evoke the dress without copying it, underlining her own status as a commoner marrying a prince, but also avoiding any comparisons to previous brides in the British royal family,” Marquez added. 

A lovely book by my costume-history colleague, Kristina Haugland of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Grace Kelly: Icon of Style to Royal Bride, shares the story behind the creation and sentiment of the gown and its accessories...which were all given to the museum by the new princess soon after her wedding. The gown was last on display in 2006.

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LOVE

 

 

Costume History as Human History

One of the reasons I've always enjoyed studying, reading about, and speaking on the topic of costume history is because "what we wear" tells a story about "who we are"—bringing an intimacy to the human story with all of its creative spirit! As King Louis XIV of France said: "Fashion is the mirror of history."

Costume historian Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is one of those storytellers who integrates this fashion and human narrative in a delightfully enlightening way! The latest book by this prolific author, Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century, was recently featured in a lecture for The National Arts Club. 

Click here to be taken to Kimberly's entertaining talk, slide show, and Q & A. Enjoy!

Falling In Love

Enjoy another excerpt from my book-in-progress,   The Spritual Mission of a Princess....

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Much has been written about how Diana Spencer fell in love with an “image” of Prince Charles and not with the man. But she would not be the first person to objectify another, falling in love with a concept, a persona, an impression “instead of discovering who is really there,” as spiritual teacher Patricia Albere shared. In her book, Evolutionary Relationships, Albere wrote about the principles (including engagement, commitment, truth, trust, openness, intimacy, sensitivity, influence, and true autonomy) required to deepen any relationship—whether friend, family member, or lover—into a mutual awakening of beloved souls…into an “evolutionary relationship.” Then, ‘falling in love’ becomes something else altogether. “When you enter into an Evolutionary Relationship with a sexual partner,” explained Albere, “you have the opportunity to discover who your partner really is and what is possible between you…and what is needed to turn your relationship into a sacred marriage, a spiritual union.” 

Perhaps Diana had some intuitive, old-soul knowing of this kind of sacred union, but like most people, she didn’t know what it would take to have it—and especially, how to prepare for it. It takes emotional maturity, the courage to be transparent, a heightened level of spiritual awakening, patience—“a sacred connection cannot be forced,” as Albere wrote. 

I was reminded of what Meghan Markle said about the day she married Diana’s son Prince Harry—her wedding a global spectacle—with millions of people watching, appreciating, judging. “H and I are really, really good at finding each other in the chaos. When we find each other, we reconnect to, like, ‘Oh it’s you. It’s you.’” She added that it wasn’t as though the rest of it didn’t matter—the royal setting, the elegantly appointed trappings of the wedding—but “it feels temporary.” In such a spiritual union as they appear to have, it’s the connection, the love that feels real, feels eternal. (And those of us watching that lovely celebration of marriage could feel it as well.) Meghan’s friend Vicky Tsai, after attending the wedding ceremony, confirmed: “It felt like a moment where the world paused and celebrated love.”

Although Diana might have yearned for this level of intimate connection with a partner, in the pretense-riddled ‘arranged marriage’ framework of her Windsor world, such depth and harmony and spiritual bonding was not possible. Even with her heart-centered sensibility, all Diana had to go on when she married was her teenage romance-novel imagination, a wounded child’s neediness, and society’s outdated notion of the ‘institution’ of marriage. Her frustration and deep disappointment lashed out toward her husband with anger and blame, privately and, stunningly (given the ‘never complain, never explain’ mantra of the royal family), publicly.

        In Diana: The Voice of Change, Stewart Pearce wrote how Princess Diana’s spot-lit marriage to the heir to the British throne put a spotlight on the archaic customs associated with marriage as well as on a woman’s autonomy—or lack of it. “Diana’s feminine force had disowned the negative masculine when she ‘outed’ Charles, calling for a new level of maturity and truth.” Feminist writers believed that when Diana found a way to speak out about the inauthentic aspects of their marriage—her bold actions condemned at the time by some as outrageous, even scandalous—other women were emboldened to find their voice. “This released the voice of millions of women, who felt that Diana had given them the right to speak,” Pearce added. He believed you could follow the thread that got unraveled in her public revelations about ‘men behaving badly’ directly to the Time’s Up and MeToo movements over two decades later.

        As human consciousness was expanding in the last two decades of the twentieth century, parallel to Diana’s time in the spotlight, the nature of relationships and structure of marriage was transforming. In The Seat of Soul, Gary Zukav saw a more enlightened future when intimate relationships would be “spiritual partnerships” where both people thrive and the focus is on each other’s spiritual growth—evolving from the old, less empowering “five-sensory relationships.”  The more consciously aware “multisensory humans,” in Zukav’s words, naturally gravitate toward “spiritual partnerships.” (Maybe Diana sought guidance here since this culture-changing book was published in the late 1980s when her marriage was a gloomy mess.) Zukav explained that “spiritual partners help one another recognize parts of their personalities that come from love—such as gratitude, patience, and caring—and cultivate them by acting on them consciously.” Being conscious, awake to the subtleties of life, and emotionally courageous were key here. Zukav continued: “Spiritual partners also help one another recognize parts of their personalities that come from fear—such as anger, jealousy, and righteousness—and challenge them by acting from loving parts of their personalities (such as patience) when frightened parts (such as impatience) are active.” (Perhaps Diana wasn’t emotionally grounded enough, especially in those early years of marriage, to practice these principles, but this language, I believe, would have resonated with her.)

In addition to the cultural shifts in relationships and marriage at the time, the hard edge of masculine/feminine identity was also changing as many women were recognizing their “masculine” traits (speaking up for themselves, becoming leaders) and some men were acknowledging their “feminine” nature (being more compassionate and nurturing), shaking up an old societal template for gender. As human beings were evolving, long-accepted yet limiting ways of being and relating were dissolving—new guidelines were required for fully satisfying relationships. “The ‘Till death do us part’ paradigm within marriage,” Pearce wrote, “no longer could remain a meaningful construct for the bonds of deep relationship.”

        Looking back over the more than two decades since Diana’s death, Stewart Pearce was seeing how marriages that had been “sustained by the old ways of co-dependency” were ending and how both women and men were “releasing the obsolete stereotypes” of marriage so they could have relationships of deep connection of the heart. “At core, the patriarchy, which had flourished through a malformation of the masculine, was being transformed on the altar of the newly sacralized feminine,” Pearce continued with his usual passion. “Love, compassion, inclusivity, nurturing, and peaceful co-existence are what we yearn for, are what we seek out in our intimate relationships….” This sounds most ‘natural’ for us now, but at the time and in the environment in which Diana lived, when she declared these loving aspects missing in her marriage—indeed, in most marriages she saw in her aristocratic world—it was revolutionary. ~

[Part Two of this section from the chapter "A Woman's Inheritance" will be posted later....]