Buckingham Palace spotlights gorgeous Georgian clothing, jewelery – WWD

London – The coronation of Charles III in two weeks could mark the beginning of a new Calorian era. Nevertheless, the royal curator does not seem to understand Georgian Britain very well.

Three weeks after the opening of the ‘Crown to Couture’ exhibition at Kensington Palace, we explored status-obsessed Georgians and how they used fashion to climb the social ladder. I’ll look it up, but there’s another show going on a few miles further away.

Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians opened this week at The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace. The show looks at Georgian Britain through the lens of fashion and showcases more than 200 of her works from the Royal Collection.

The Royal Collection is one of the largest and most important art collections in the world and one of the last intact European royal collections.

The Queen’s Gallery show features paintings, prints and drawings by artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, Johann Joseph Zoffany and William Hogarth, as well as rare clothing, jewelry and accessories from the period.

Unlike the Kensington Palace show, which compares Georgian court style to modern red carpet fashion, this exhibit focuses on what different classes wore, from laundry maids to aristocrats.

Among the highlights is the wedding dress of Princess Charlotte of Wales, the daughter (and only illegitimate child) of King George IV, on display for the first time in over a decade.

Charlotte’s marriage to Prince Leopold is considered one of the most important royal weddings of the era, and her silk-embroidered bridal gown is the only surviving royal wedding dress from Georgian times.

Anna Reynolds, Curator of Style & Society, “From influencers and fashion magazines to ideas about the value of clothes and how to recycle and reuse them, visitors will see how much the Georgian era has in common with the fashion landscape as we know it today. You might be surprised to find out.”

Clothes and paintings tell the story of Georgian life.

Alan Ramsay’s life-size coronation portraits of King George III and Queen Charlotte show how ceremonial garments were chosen to emphasize themes of continuity, tradition, grandeur and wealth. intended to show.

Queen Charlotte wears a gown heavily embroidered with gold thread and a stomacher panel encrusted with diamonds. Today it would have been worth almost £10 million.

The show looks at the fashions worn by the middle and upper classes in amusement parks, theaters and coffeehouses of the time.

On display are the pages of influential French fashion magazines, which recommend looks for women inspired by men’s riding dresses and military uniforms.

There is also jewelry that Rayons described as “very personal and sentimental”.

Items include a diamond ring given to Queen Charlotte on her wedding day and a bracelet with nine lockets. Six contain locks of hair, and one depicts Princess Charlotte of Wales’s left eye miniature.

There are also jeweled snuffboxes and chatelaines that were attached to the waist and used to carry items from pocket watches to perfume bottles.

The exhibit also explores the development of hair, cosmetics and grooming tools used by Georgian men and women to achieve elaborate and towering styles, as well as 18th-century eyeglasses and dentistry.

On display for the first time is a silver-plated mobile toilet service. This was purchased by the future George IV as a gift for his private secretary for his £300 (equivalent to his £20,000-plus today).

The service includes over 100 objects such as razors, combs, ear spoons, tongue scrapers, as well as tools for cleaning guns, making hot chocolate, and more.

But the days of excess are gone, and it’s no exaggeration to say that King Charles III, despite his vast wealth and soft power, travels lighter than his Georgian predecessors.