So today we're at Kensington Palace and as promised we're going to be taking you on a small sneak peek of the exhibition Crammscature.

My name is Polly Putnam and I'm one of the curators of the exhibition.

And my name is Claudia Aycock Williams and I'm the other exhibition curator. We're not going to be doing a full tour, we're just going to be visiting some of our favourite bits.

And at the moment we're standing outside the palace, actually not quite where people would have arrived at court,

but where our visitors arrived today. Luckily, the palace isn't quite open yet, so we have the space to ourselves.

Shall we head inside, Polly?

So we're in the King's Gallery. This is one of the most elaborate spaces in the palace, really.

It's a long gallery space that's covered in red

damask. And during the reign of George II and Queen Caroline, it was one of the main

entertaining spaces in the palace. So it was really here that you came to see and be seen and your

clothing played a very important role in ensuring that you were noticed in what would have been an incredibly crowded space with lots of people jostling for attention.

So in here we're looking at spectacle dressing really both in 18th century terms and in contemporary terms.

So this really is our red carpet and we're looking at the way in which either through sort of volume or through an element of performance or through artistry, your clothing can help get you noticed.

And the first object you come to in this space is a magnificent, completely enormous, blush,

tulle gown that was worn by Billy Eilish to the Met Gala in 2021.

And it was a big moment really of a kind of personal rebranding for Billy Eilish.

She had just released her new album and she was very much trying to show a kind of more grown-up version of herself. And she worked with the stylist Dina Giannini to create a look that was inspired by Marilyn Monroe and that kind of old Hollywood quite sort of seductive feel.

And so the gown was created for her by Oscar de Lorenta.

And as I said, it's this, it's a, it's a blush tulle and it's completely enormous.

And what she said was that she really wanted to take up space. So she wanted to be noticed and she did that wearing a dress that is actually really quite

simple in terms of its embellishment or its decoration but it's in its structure and its form

and its silhouette that it really has a huge impact.

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