Hello, I'm Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces.

You're listening to our podcast that explores the history and stories of our six palaces.

These talks are a collection of some of our best live events.

I really hope you enjoy listening.

Throughout history, the clothing of British royalty has influenced fashion tastes and trends.

This series compiled from our archive explores contemporary royal fashion and its influence on what we wear today.

This talk on the fashion of 20th century royal women takes a journey through the design

of a royal dress from the initial brief to the garments production and completion.

Visually impressive clothing has helped to distinguish members of the royal family from other people for many centuries.

Over time, many royal individuals have used dress to create spectacle or to communicate a message to the wider world. Therefore, as a royal designer, much care has to be taken to design an outfit

or gown that is appropriate for the royal wearer. I recently had the pleasure of talking to

Saeed Ishmael, who was the husband

of late dress designer Catherine Walker, whose fashion house provided over 500 outfits for Diana Princess

of Wales. When talking about the design process, he said that when they designed for Diana,

they had three key ideas or concepts in mind. The first was origin,

meaning the tradition of a dress for a royal woman. He showed these images. On the far left, we have

Queen Alexandra. In the centre is Queen Mary, and on the right, of course, is Diana Princess of Wales.

They were designing for a woman who was the

latest in the line of royal women who had a specific role and royal image to portray. The very

famous dress on the right hand side is known as the Elvis dress and was designed by Catherine

Walker and you can see how she's taken influence from the very traditional royal images of Diana's predecessors to create a dress

that mirrors this image in a much more up-to-date way. The second concept they kept in mind was what they

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