Royal dresses at Kensington Palace

We’re not often granted such intimate proximity

to Her Majesty’s clothing. Or is it costume? As a new display of dresses from the wardrobes of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Diana, Princess

of Wales at Kensington Palace demonstrates, the blurring of lines between the person and the state

is one measure of a royal design’s success. This full-length satin gown, by Hardy Amies and frst worn in 1972 when her Majesty met President Pompidou at Versailles, twinkles with the requisite pomp and circumstance – courtesy of a satin bodice veiled with two layers of chifon and embroidered with clouds of pearl beads and diamanté clusters. The simple silhouette and shape-holding fabric also refect Her Majesty’s preferences for what might be called pragmatic regality. Scrupulously economical,

she wore it again for her ofcial Silver Jubilee photograph, an image subsequently reproduced on a host of memorabilia, adopted by Andy Warhol for his series of screen prints Reigning Queens and used on

the cover of God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols. Like her ancestor Elizabeth 1, Her Majesty’s sartorial

choices suggest an impeccable understanding of what works in pictures, viewed not just from a physical distance but through the passage of time. In

her early days she clearly engaged with fashion, although perhaps less so than Princess Margaret, who

deployed the intensely feminine, romantic tics of the 1950s (and later, the elaborate, movie-star hair and make-up of the 1960s) to defne a distinctive,

younger-sister charm and glamour. Curiously, it is the swaggering, huge-shouldered drama of the Princess of Wales’s wardrobe that looks most dated, but that may be a trick of time. In another

30 years, that too may have acquired classic status.

Opens February 11, hrp.org.uk

Photograph by Simon Brown