Fashion Rules: Restyled

‘I despise simplicity. It is the negation of all that is beautiful.’ So said Norman Hartnell. The ideal royal dress designer, therefore? Well, this delightful, intimate exhibition of 18 dresses belonging to the Queen, Princess Margaret and Princess Diana suggests other possibilities. In this revamp of the long-running and highly successful Fashion Rules exhibition of royal clothes, the outfits have been added to (plus a case of Princess Margaret’s accessories) and rearranged to reflect the unique requirements of royal dressing.

British royalty do not slavishly follow fashion – that is left to continental highnesses – but they do not ignore it either. Their clothes, as royal clothes have always been, are costumes, intended to make them both recognisable and unique while not utterly divorced from their time. In youth, the Queen and Princess Margaret favoured the New Look and, subject to only black and white photography, could wear darker colours. Princess Margaret ordered from Dior (a lovely example is on view here) and Hartnell made her some fabulous New Look gowns, also on show. The ivory satin one has only one band of embroidery – did she have a tussle with him to achieve this despised simplicity?

I know from my privileged access to the Queen’s correspondence with Hardy Amies that she told him that ‘no bare flesh’ was the order of the day for her state visit to the Middle East in 1979. The result was the floaty evening dress, quintessentially 1970s, in orange with gold spangles and kaftan sleeves we see here. The other Amies creation for the Queen on view, which she wore in official photographs for the Silver Jubilee that were later ‘adapted’ by Andy Warhol and the Sex Pistols, is much more a timeless creation of embroidery and sheer silk, fitted – as royal costume often is – ruthlessly to the body. A curious aside: on the walls are sketches by Ian Thomas, who designed for the Queen in the 1970s, which include plaintive little notes: ‘Your Majesty could wear the emerald pendant?’ No, the royal image is controlled by the Queen’s dresser and by the Queen herself. Jewellery and accessories are their territory. Amies had a similar hopeless battle trying to get the Queen to carry a white handbag.

What Hartnell would have thought of the pared-down, tube dresses Catherine Walker made for Diana in her latter days I can’t imagine. But they are central to her iconography. Diana’s 1980s phase of dreamy princess confections is also represented with breathtaking examples from Zandra Rhodes and Bruce Oldfield. What creations! 

Until January 2017 at Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, London W8: 020-3166 6000, www.hrp.org.uk