Tropical-Clothing: Tropical Short Dresses : The New Design

The Royal Wardrobe: Fashion fit for Queen Elizabeth II

On her first Commonwealth tour alone the Queen took 100 different outfits. Add all the tours she has made since then and you get an awful lot of dresses. We have a look at the ultimate working wardrobe.

Autumn 1953. The world waits for the first sight of its new leader. After half a century of middle-aged men, the idea of a beautiful young woman ruling over the Commonwealth seems like the stuff of fairy tales. For millions of Australians, Canadians and Indians, Queen Elizabeth II is more than a figurehead; she is the living embodiment of authority, elegance and grace. Stepping out in a series of dazzling dresses, many of them by the legendary couturier Norman Hartnell, the 27-year-old embarks on a six-month tour throughout the Commonwealth countries that will cement her position as ruler of much of the free world.

Since that first tour the Queen has made 170 official visits to Commonwealth countries – they still account for about a third of her foreign travel. Over that time she has used her outfits to craft carefully an image of a world leader. Politics are important, but clothes are crucial, too. Resplendent in satin, shimmering with beadwork, adorned with priceless jewels, the young Queen used her wardrobe to send a message to the world about status, power and her unique place in history.

Starting as a young woman in fairytale ball-gowns, she has moved through the crisp tailoring of the 1960s and into the softer lines of the 1970s, before settling into her present incarnation as a chic senior stateswoman whose style is admired by a younger generation (the model Agyness Deyn has cited her as a style icon). This summer 28 key dresses from the Queen’s wardrobe archive go on display (along with jewellery and millinery) at Buckingham Palace as part of 'Queen and Commonwealth: the Royal Tour’, an exhibition to mark the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth.

It provides a fascinating insight into the way clothes have been used over the past five decades to project messages about royal power, and keep a petite woman looking fashionable and feeling comfortable during 15-hour work days.

When the Queen embarked on that first Commonwealth tour in 1953, just a year after succeeding her father, George VI, it was inevitable that she would turn to Norman Hartnell, the trusted couturier who had recently made both her wedding and Coronation dresses. Still, the challenge was extraordinary. The tour was to last six months and would require 100 new outfits. What’s more, points out the exhibition curator Caroline de Guitaut, climate changes would be extreme, veering from the sticky heat of the West Indies to the chill of north Asia.

Hartnell succeeded magnificently, adapting his signature style of full-skirted dresses decorated with exquisite beading for the rigours of life in perpetual motion. 'Hartnell used a great deal of duchesse satin,’ explains de Guitaut. 'He found that more conventional satin tended to crease, while heavier materials were simply too hot.

Duchesse satin, however, combined exactly the right amount of weight and softness.’ An evening dress designed for a later tour of New Zealand in 1963 bears this out. The oyster-coloured duchesse-satin skirt is cut into a scissor-style shape, which manages to be both architectural and fluid. What’s more, its heavier weight provides a firm backdrop for a beautiful embroidered panel decorated with pearls, diamanté and sequins arranged in a diamond pattern.

Hartnell, however, was not just about producing fancy-dress fantasies for a fairytale princess. A careful look at his work shows that his clothes sent specific messages about the Queen’s status as head of the Commonwealth. She herself has always been adamant that her evening clothes should pay homage to the host country in some way, either by use of colour or design. Hartnell therefore incorporated references into his show-stopping creations. In 1961 he designed an evening dress for a state dinner in Lahore that combined a full-length ivory dress with an extraordinary train of emerald green, representing the national colours of Pakistan. For the 1970 tour of Australia he created a bright mimosa-yellow day dress and matching coat that could be accessorised by the yellow-diamond wattle brooch she was given by the Australian people. Another time, on a visit to Montreal in 1976 for the opening of the Olympic Games, there was a subtle pattern of Olympic rings incorporated into a dress of blue silk.

If Hartnell was the king of evening wear, then it was Hardy Amies who shone when it came to designing the Queen’s day wardrobe. He started designing for the Queen in the early 1950s and retired just a year before his death, at the age of 93 in 2003. A master of tailoring, Amies eased the Queen towards the sharper silhouettes of the 1960s, 1970s and even the 1980s. Yet he remained mindful that there were limits to how faithfully the Queen could, or would, follow fashion.

In his autobiography, Amies explained that in the 1960s 'we succeeded in persuading the Queen to wear quite short dresses, but the Queen always made the final decision after she had seen the effect of the skirt sitting down, knowing that she would often be seen on platforms, getting in and out of motor cars, not to mention aeroplanes and yachts.’ Although the exhibition remains silent about Her Majesty’s personal likes and dislikes, gossipy anecdotes from Hartnell and Amies suggest a woman who has a decided sense about what suits her, but is always willing to listen to expert advice. Not especially interested in fashion per se, she clearly has a very keen awareness of the power of her clothes to do the kind of work she requires of them.

That work, of course, is often about simply making a woman of 5ft 4in instantly visible. This is why the Queen has tended towards blocks of strong colour – bright blues, blazing greens and singing pinks. Hats, by contrast, tend to be less noticeable, since they must neither shadow the face nor fly off in a breeze (the Queen is rumoured to have quipped in the past that she 'has never lost a hat yet’). Unruly gusts of wind also account for the fact that hems of dresses are often weighted down. Other less predictable events are anticipated, too. The Queen might be asked to ride an elephant, as she was during an early tour of Pakistan, or be presented with unusual items of clothing, which will have to be incorporated into an existing outfit. Her ceremonial feather cloak, presented to her by the Maoris of New Zealand and worn subsequently on several public occasions, offered particular challenges.

These days the 83-year-old Queen makes fewer Commonwealth tours. Certainly, embarking upon the kind of six-month trip with which she opened her reign would be unthinkable. All the same, this autumn will see her travelling to Trinidad and Tobago for the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. And, doubtless, she will be dressed as cleverly as ever. A new generation of designers, including Stewart Parvin and the Queen’s own dresser, Angela Kelly, work hard to produce outfits that continue in the best traditions of Norman Hartnell and Hardy Amies. The results are clothes that are fashionable without being flippant, visible but never shocking.

They are respectful, elegant and, most important, knowing. Above all, these are clothes that work as hard as the woman who wears them.

Tropical-Clothing

Tropical Clothing : The New Design

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Tropical Short Dresses : The New Design

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