Ever wondered who designed Princess Diana’s dresses? Or what style of gown would get you admitted to the most prestigious high-society ball of the year in the 1800s? Kensington Palace’s new royal fashion exhibition, Dress Codes, offers a rare glimpse into a sartorial high-society world spanning centuries of fashion.
Opening this week on the 13th March, and running until November this year, 34 gowns and outfits spanning 500 years of fashion design from Kensington Palace’s Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection will be on display – many available to the public for the first time ever. This exhibition is an exclusive invitation into the ballrooms – and beyond – that formed the heartbeat of court life, and a special look at how royals and their acquaintances have dressed through the ages.
Here’s everything you need to know and see at Kensington Palace’s Dress Codes exhibition. (Spoiler: you don’t need to be a Royal Family fanatic to enjoy it.)
East Front from East Front Gardens looking west. © Historic Royal Palaces. Photos of exterior of Kensington Palace October 2023. © Historic Royal Palaces.
Set in a beautiful wing of London’s stately Kensington Palace, once the home of Princess Diana and now housing some of her most iconic garments, is Dress Codes. The exhibition is spread across three main rooms – with smaller and more interactive spaces in between – and moves from debutante ball dresses, to a dress Vivienne Westwood designed and wore to Buckingham Palace in 2006.
Dress Codes begins with a magnificent display of masculine tailoring – featuring the most ornately embroidered suit jackets you’ll maybe ever see. From the British court suit (a British diplomatic uniform from 1923) to a Japanese court suit from the early 1900s, the embroidery is made from a gold leaf thread: it’s maximalism for the win here.
In the eighteenth century, members of high society and the royal court would not send out invitations to ceremonial events like debutante balls. Instead, you’d be admitted at the door if you were dressed correctly. This was an accurate way to weed out the wealthy, as a tailored suit – silk and all – would cost on average the same amount as a townhouse.
Also in the opening room is a beautiful pink silk ballgown, adorned with handsewn floral appliqué. The ruching on the bodice is so delicate that the exhibition’s musical composer – who produced a classical soundtrack especially for Dress Codes – took inspiration from its form for the music’s melody. The music throughout the exhibition is inspired by the laborious and artisanal process of making a dress, with staccato moments to mimic the regular movements of a sewing needle.
While the antique garments are carefully preserved behind glass, a small room in the exhibition features a floor-to-ceiling cloth samples, from large ostrich feathers to cotton Liberty prints, gold lamé and houndstooth tweeds so you can feel the texture of each dress and jacket. Rare black and white videos from the archives also display how some of these pieces – including Ursula Lawley’s beautiful gold lamé wedding dress from 1927 – would move when worn on the body.
In one of the side rooms, a glass cabinet’s temperature is carefully monitored, as the mannequin wears an ornate floral tiara crafted from wax. If the temperature shifts the wax so carefully preserved and resorted from the 1920s will melt.
The second main room in the exhibition offers an (incredibly) rare chance to see Queen Victoria’s mourning outfits – complete with hidden pockets – which the late queen wore for forty years after her husband, Prince Albert’s death in 1861 until her own in 1901. The mourning cap is so delicately crafted from silk that the threadwork to repair it required a needle so thin it is hardly visible to the naked eye.
The second room also features matching floral dresses worn by Queen Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret when they were young, as well as two outfits gifted to a charity auction by Princess Diana to raise money for HIV research.
The exhibition ends with a sweet nod to contemporary fashion design, with eight designs made by a group of 25 youth participants, aged 14 to 17, who have each creatively responded to the clothes on display for the first time in the Historic Royal Palace’s history. In lots of ways, it’s clear to see how contemporary fashion still finds its sartorial roots woven amongst the trends of eighteenth to twentieth century popular styles – the elegance of a corseted bodice or how to tailor a suit jacket – and how much we can learn from this period too. It’s refreshing to see so much intricate stitching, careful embroidery, and a creative attitude towards re-working and re-purposing existing materials so that these dresses could be worn and reworn throughout their lifespan. And Dress Codes is where to see it all.
All image credit: Historic Royal Palaces. Lead image credit: Dress Codes Room 2 dresses © Historic Royal Palaces
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