Dress Codes of Historic Court Fashion

Historic Royal Palaces Podcast

Historic Royal Palaces

London, Palace, Tower, Historic, Conservation, Royal, Lecture, Learning, Kensington, Hampton, Kew, Banqueting, History, Court, Of, House, Palaces

4.6 • 635 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dress codes can tell us so much about historic court fashion and the rules and regulations of royal clothing. But they can also relate to the way we think about, and express who we are today, as much as in the past.

To celebrate the opening of our new exhibition at Kensington Palace, Caterina Berni speaks to Curator Matthew Story and bespoke period tailor Zack Pinsent of Pinsent Tailoring; to explore the Dress Codes we follow every single day.

Decode the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection in our Dress Codes exhibition at Kensington Palace.

See the Royal Wardrobe and items from the exhibition up close in our online collaboration with Google Arts & Culture.

See the garments discussed in this episode:

18th century court suit with silver thread

1920s Court Dress

Vivienne Westwood’s Investiture dress

Mourning Dress with white and mauve flowers.

Japanese Diplomatic Court Suit

Gold Wedding Dress

Duke of Windsor’s Tartan suit

Fancy Dress gown worn gown worn to Queen Victoria’s costume ball

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to the Historic Royal Palaces podcast, the podcast that tells the
0:08.5	history and stories of our six palaces. My name is Katerina Burney and I'm an exhibition
0:14.1	manager here at the palaces. A dress code is a set of rules that governs the way we dress
0:19.3	and how we are viewed. An item of clothing
0:21.9	can communicate who we are and what we do, as can choosing to break or manipulate the conventions
0:27.4	of what is expected of us. In today's episode, we're celebrating the opening of dress codes,
0:33.4	our new exhibition at Kensington Palace, that decodes some of the most important outfits
0:39.0	in the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection.
0:41.3	By exploring the conventions of royal and court clothing, we want to reveal how these speak
0:46.5	to the dress codes we follow every single day.
0:50.0	So to discuss all this, I'm joined by my colleague and fellow team member behind the Dress
0:55.1	Codes Exhibition Curator Matthew Story.
0:58.8	Matthew is the curator who cares for the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, a collection of 10,000
1:04.6	objects that span 500 years of history.
1:07.8	Thank you for being here, Matthew.
1:09.3	It's great to be here.
1:10.7	And have you recovered from exhibition opening? Just about, I am taking it easy this week
1:15.6	because last week was intense. But amazing.
1:19.2	Were you a puddle on the floor by the end? Pretty much.
1:22.6	I feel you. And we're also thrilled to be joined by Zach Vincent of Vincent tailoring.
1:27.9	Zach is a bespoke period tailor who has quite a presence on social media.
1:32.1	It's great to have you on the podcast, Zach.
	...

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