Many of my Style File Friday posts focus on women and their contributions to fashion. Rightly or wrongly, fashion is largely associated with women. Given that it is also Women’s History Month and we have a coronation on the close horizon, it seems the perfect time to delve into some more royal fashion history. So, I will be spending some time looking at each of the modern British consort coronation gowns, and the people who helped make them!
Note 1: I would like to highlight something about these three coronation dresses is that the designers that worked on them are all no longer in business. Worth, Reville & Rossiter, and Madame Handley-Seymour have all since shuttered their doors.
Note 2: I am only featuring the gown that each queen wore to her own coronation. (So this post does not include the gown that Mary wore to the 1937 coronation, or the gown that Elizabeth wore to the 1953 coronation.)
Queen Alexandra’s Coronation Dress- 1902
Queen Alexandra of Denmark was known her entire adult life for being a fashion trendsetter. Although she was Princess of Wales for several decades before her husband was King for a decade, she dictated fashion in a way that her mother-in-law (Queen Victoria) never did. (Victoria did set some trends when she was younger but not on the scale we see with Alexandra.) We can trace the popularity of the princess silhouette back to Alexandra, as well as the fascination with chokers in the nineteenth century. (There are theories that she wore them to hide a scar on her neck, but whatever the reason was, she wore them consistently.)
Queen Alexandra’s coronation dress was as incredible as one might expect. She tasked Lady Curzon, an American who married into the British aristocracy, with helping to design and create her dress. Lady Curzon was serving as Vicereine of India, and therefore was able to have bespoke Indian fabrics created. This meant two things: Alexandra’s dress could be even more opulent, as Indian fabrics were known to be of the highest quality, and that Alexandra could further highlight the connection between Britain and India. (At the turn of the twentieth century, this was key.) Lady Curzon was also quite intelligent; she knew that Alexandra would be warm under her robes during the summer coronation and had lighter fabrics used.
After the gown arrived in London and The Queen approved it, it was sent to the House of Worth in Paris for final alterations.
Queen Mary’s Coronation Dress- 1911
Next, we move to Queen Mary of Teck. Mary, unlike her mother-in-law, was not known for her sense of style. She was not unfashionable in her youth but did not set trends. I was able to see a few of her surviving garments at the Fashion Museum in Bath, and they very much reflected earlier times.
Queen Mary’s coronation dress was designed and created by Reville & Rossiter, an English fashion house, with the help of either the Royal School of Needlework or Princess Louise’s Needlework School. The RSN/PLNS traced the pattern and the embroidery. The golden embroidery stands out exquisitely on the cream satin; the floral design is stunning. And intriguingly, it features a princess silhouette- popularised by Alexandra! One benefit of time is that we do have colour photographs of this gown. (You can see them and learn more about the gown on the RCT site here.)
Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation Dress- 1937
Queen Elizabeth (later known as the Queen Mother) was also not particularly known for her fashion. (Her daughter, Princess Margaret, would take that crown.) However, she turned to trusted dressmakers to help portray her chosen image. Elizabeth used Madame Handley-Seymour, a court dressmaker, for her 1923 wedding dress. For over a decade, the women had a close working relationship. By the mid-1930s, Elizabeth had turned to Norman Hartnell for crucial pieces, and he had most of her business. (Hartnell designed her famous “White Wardrobe” for her 1938 tour to France.) Elizabeth still turned to Madame Handley-Seymour for her coronation, though.
Like Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth’s 1937 coronation gown drew on multiple creators. While Madame Handley-Seymour designed the gown itself, the Royal School of Needlework designed and created the gold embroidery on the gown itself. A trend that we’ve seen on royal gowns since, it featured all four of the British national flowers, as well as that of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
Out of the three modern British consort coronation gowns, which is your favourite?
Cheers,
The Historian
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