What can we learn from these historic wedding dresses in anticipation of Catherine Middleton’s dress?
“We can see from earlier royal wedding dresses that all royal brides have looked to the gifts that their generation, their era, can provide for them. For some royal brides it has been a wealth of arts and craft skills that have been available in the country. In other instances it has been fashion that has been a way of empathising with their community and the generation of which they are a part. In more recent years we have had the rise of the couturier. 2011 is a very different world to that of earlier royal brides, but one which provides many, many opportunities for creating a lovely thing.”
How does the choice of dress reflect changing attitudes towards royal marriage?
“The choice of dress for a royal wedding shows in a really interesting way changing attitudes to royal marriage in itself. It is really interesting if you compare Princess Charlotte’s little silver dress, with the dress worn by her younger cousin Queen Victoria who gets married not so very long after. Charlotte’s dress is made for rich silver textiles in a grand tradition streaming back over the centuries. When royal marriage was a matter of foreign policy, of diplomacy, the cost and the opulence of all this was used as a way of signally status and dignity of the nation. Victoria was already Queen when she is married and while she realised as a clever young woman that marriage had been used often as a political tool, she didn’t want that to be a factor on her wedding day to Prince Albert. She was very clear. This is a personal transaction, this is a moment for themselves - and she designed a dress which steps over that mark – it becomes the kind of wedding dress that any young, well brought up girl, could aspire to.”
How can Royal wedding dresses be interpreted as a statement for the nation
“Royal wedding dresses have always been message givers. Even the simplest of the dresses, such as the one worn by Queen Victoria, is absolutely replete with message. First of all it is made out of an English silk, which was woven in Spitalfields in East London. It is decorated with English lace that was a special and well-publicised commission from the villages of Honiton and Beer in the West Country. So Victoria on her wedding day was actually shouting loud about things that Britain was really good at.
“The twentieth century dresses show just how important it was to get the message right. There had been two world wars by the time Princess Elizabeth married Prince Phillip of Greece in 1947. It was a desperately austere time in British history. There was clothes rationing, materials were really, really scarce and many of the options that had been available to Princess Elizabeth’s predecessors weren’t there. The solution was to find a good and appropriate inspiration for the dress design. Norman Hartnell, the couturier found a painting by Botticelli of Primavera, the goddess of spring. This was going to be a dress which was a sign of rejuvenation; it was a dress as a sign of better things to come. So it is made out of silk satin- English silk largely, but it is embroidered throughout with flowers and becomes a wonderful joyous thing!
