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. In the 1500s, the Tudor Court was the place to be seen.

This series of talks looks into court life in the 16th century

during the reign of King Henry VIII.

In this talk, Historic World Palace's curator Ileri Lynn

discusses how Tudor fashion was designed to convey messages of status, power and authority in the Tudor Court.

My name is Aleri. Thank you very much for coming. I'm the author of this new book on Tudor Fashion.

Like many of you, I am a very avid watcher of history documentaries and devour

generally anything to do with the Tudors. And many of my colleagues will tell you that the

history of the Tudors can be told through architecture or music or something like that, but I'm here

this evening to tell you that they're wrong. And that basically the history of the Tudors

is best told through dress for many reasons. So I am the curator of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, which is a collection of about 10,000

items of royal and court and ceremonial dress dating back to Tudor Times.

It's stored here at Hampton Court Palace, which is quite fitting, because of course it was

here and at the Tower of London another

of Historic Royal Palace's sites that the great stories of the Tudor Age played out.

But one of my very sort of disappointing responsibilities is that I have to answer inquiries

from people who would like to come and see the Tudor's clothes,

the wardrobe of Henry VIII or the wardrobe of Elizabeth I.

And it's my sad duty to tell them that they can't come and see it because it no longer exists.

Only a very small fraction of items have survived from the Tudor period, largely because

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