© Historic Royal Palaces
Historic Royal Palaces has announced a new exhibition, Dress Codes, set to open at Kensington Palace in March 2025, showcasing a collection of never-before-seen royal fashion treasures.
Showcasing both instantly recognisable and rarely seen highlights from the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, the display will explore the codes and conventions of royal clothing and the powerful impact fashion can make when boundaries are pushed, and dress codes evolve. Looking through a contemporary lens at historic royal and court dress, the exhibition will reveal global connections alongside personal stories that resonate with the modern dress codes we all follow today.
Highlights will include two matching Liberty print floral cotton dresses, worn in 1936 by Queen Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth) and her younger sister Princess Margaret when they were children growing up in London, on display at Kensington Palace for the first time. The young sisters often wore matching clothes and their own distinctive dress code, and the rare survivals are a very personal example of the royal family recycling and repairing clothing. The dress worn by a young Princess Elizabeth shows signs of adaptation to accommodate a growing Princess, including altered hems and seams. It may have been passed down to her younger sister, reflecting the economic attitudes of the 1930s that favoured making things last.
Members of the Royal Family follow certain dress codes for their official duties, often using clothing to communicate messages about their roles or the causes they champion. Items of clothing worn by former royal residents of Kensington Palace will go on display, including a glittering red Bruce Oldfield gown worn by Diana, Princess of Wales, for a state visit to Saudi Arabia in 1987, showcasing the importance placed on dressing correctly for official duties. Alongside this will be a Catherine Walker green silk velvet tuxedo-style dress, worn to formal family events and then shared with the world as one of 79 dresses famously auctioned to raise money for HIV/AIDS and cancer charities in 1997.
Another Kensington Palace resident known for her style and for playing within the royal fashion boundaries of the time was Princess Margaret. The dress code is set to exhibit two items of dress that have never been displayed in the UK before. A 1978 Thea Porter evening ensemble will go on public display for the very first time, alongside a colourful green embroidered evening gown by the Filipino designer Jose Pitoy Moreno, worn in 1980.
The exhibition will also feature items worn by Queen Victoria, the ultimate observer of royal dress codes. These include a never-before-displayed black mourning bodice, a rare survivor from the early years following Prince Albert’s death. Queen Victoria was born at Kensington Palace in 1819 and spent her childhood there.
Click here to discover more about the Dress Codes exhibition at Kensington Palace.
