Tales From The Royal Wardrobe With Lucy Worsley

Scrutinising every outfit the royals wear is nothing new
Ben-Felsenberg-176Those of us who relish every bow and button of the Duchess of Cambridge’s latest get-up – and which of us can honestly say we don’t follow royal fashion with fascination? – can give ourselves a pat on the back. Far from being idle leisure, all that leafing through glossy magazines is, in fact, vital historical research. So says (in so many words) Lucy Worsley – chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, no less.

In Tales From The Royal Wardrobe With Lucy Worsley (BBC Four, Monday, 9pm), the jovial presenter is taking a close look at the clothes worn by kings and queens, and her story is gripping in its historic detail but also very much a case of plus ça change. Image has always been ruthlessly manipulated by those in power every bit as much as by the modern spin doctor, and equally the people of the past followed each titbit of royal lifestyle with a curiosity to match that of today’s tabloid editor.

The supreme mistress of regal couture was Elizabeth I, who knew just how to use her wardrobe to conjure an irresistible image of power as a member of the ‘weaker sex’ in a man’s world: she lacked the bulk of her father Henry VIII (and the outsized codpiece noted with glee by Worsley), but she could amplify her presence with enormous fine-wire fabric wings sitting above her shoulders – ‘a sort of personal cloud of dry ice’. Today, our Elizabeth is the acme of elegant restraint, but between her and her namesake – oh, the extravagance and excess charted by Worsley in a film to savour.

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