A princely wardrobe

‘Bored with state functions and all the “outward and visible” signs of monarchy’ in the assessment of a private secretary of his father, George V, Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VIII, used dress to indicate his rejection of old-fashioned models of royal formality. Testament to the Prince’s popularity as a young man, in 1925, this portrait by John Saint Helier Lander appeared on the cover of the Christmas issue of The Illustrated London News. In place of the silk hats worn by George V, it shows Edward wearing a Prince of Wales check woollen flat cap—described at the time as ‘the most proletarian of headwear’—with a knitted Fair Isle sweater. Such laidback country clothing is appropriate to the portrait’s rural setting: it was also, as courtiers surely noted, a rejection of the sartorial proprieties to which his father adhered rigidly. The Prince’s sporting costume appeared to trumpet a new way forward for royal men.