Tales from the Royal Wardrobe with Lucy Worsley

Today few people's wardrobes attract as much attention

as the British royal family's.

Hardly a day goes by without some press comment

on a little royal romper suit,

or a designer dress,

or a sneaky high-street purchase.

And you might think that the world today has gone mad for a peek inside

the royal wardrobe, but believe me, it's always been like this.

In this programme, I'm going to open wide

the doors of the royal wardrobe to uncover its secrets,

exploring the clothes of kings and queens past and present.

From Elizabeth I, over 400 years to our current British monarch -

Queen Elizabeth II.

I believe that the fascination of royal clothing

goes beyond its cut or its colour.

These things are more than clothes, they're symbols or statements.

And I think that throughout history,

the royal wardrobe has been important

in shaping the image of the monarchy,

for better and sometimes for worse.

I'm going to start rifling through the royal wardrobes of history

with Elizabeth I.

She's a queen who I particularly admire for her skill

in using clothing to construct an image of power and majesty.

As a child, Elizabeth spent much of her time

at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire,

and it was her favourite residence throughout her life.

It was here, beneath this oak in Hatfield's grounds,

that she discovered that she was now Queen, at the age of 25.

Right from the start of her reign,

Elizabeth had to control her image very carefully.

She knew that the odds were stacked against her being a successful monarch.

Firstly, she was female - being a king was a man's job -

and secondly, because her mother had been Anne Boleyn,

many people believed that she was illegitimate.

Thirdly, she had very big shoes to fill, those of her father,

Henry VIII, who had every natural and artificial advantage.

He was a fine figure of a man.

Although when it turned to fat later on,

he was 54 inches around the waist.

But here, he's had Holbein make the most of his very splendid costume

and the eye cannot help but be drawn to this particular garment here,

the cod piece, which, following Tudor fashion, has become outsized.

Men used them as little purses to carry money in

or sometimes precious things, like jewels,

hence the expression, "a man's crown jewels".

But what Holbein is really saying here is that Henry is fertile,

he's full of lovely sperm, he is the ideal medieval macho monarch.

Elizabeth obviously didn't have her father's imposing physical attributes,

but she helped to make up for that using clothes.

And to spread the message of how queenly this queen was,

portraits of her were hung in every great house of the realm,

including Hatfield.

This is an extraordinary dress that she's wearing.

And what's this white, gauzy stuff

that's sort of swirling around her like a cloud?

Well, that's very fine fabric,

it's wired at the edges, so it gives the effect up there of wings,

so it's giving her, as she moves, tremendous presence and consequence.

It looks like a sort of personal cloud of dry ice,

swirling around her wherever she goes.

It looks fantastic in the portrait, what it was like in reality,

walking around with great wired wings, you know,

particularly if there was any kind of wind.

I guess you'd blow away if the wind got behind you.

Well, I wouldn't try it out.

While Elizabeth's incredible dress may have been impractical,

it certainly gave her presence.

But it wasn't just the colour and shape that had significance,

the dress is full of symbolism

that an Elizabethan viewer could read like a book.

To them, the pearls signified peace and purity.

She was supposed to be the Virgin Queen.

The bejewelled snake symbolised wisdom, the heart symbolised love.

This Queen ruled with both heart and head - and she had eyes everywhere.

What's going on, for example, with these little eyes?

Well, the eyes and the ears...

They really are very freakish.

They are extraordinary.

Do you think this is the Queen saying, I can hear everything

and I can see everything that you do?

It is, rule of the stage, as it were, is symbolised by eyes and ears.

What's going on with the rainbow?

We know this is the rainbow picture

because she is holding this thing that looks like a grey hosepipe.

This at one stage must have been all the colours of the rainbow

but now they've faded, so we have this little inscription here.

-That's a clue.

-The inscription in Latin says,

"Without the sun you don't get the rainbow."

So she is the sun, basically?

She is the sun, a very common metaphor for a ruler,

and the rainbow is the symbol of peace

and this is really what everyone wants - peace and tranquillity.

The picture is saying, "I've got a heart, I'm wise,

"I'm wearing a snake, I can hear you and see you with the eyes and ears

"and also I'm holding a rainbow, I can control the weather."

That's a pretty good range of skills and attributes, isn't it?

Well, effectively it is.

Elizabeth's dresses were an important part

of the Tudor propaganda machine,

where the people saw them in pictures

or on her progresses around the country

and we know they were important to her from the number she possessed.

This little street here is called Wardrobe Place

because 400 years ago, a vast building stood here

to house the royal wardrobe.

It had its own special staff, the warders of the robes.

And this map of Elizabethan London shows it took up a whole city block,

it was like a vast warehouse full of dresses.

An inventory taken in 1599 revealed that

Elizabeth I had 1,326 of them.

Elizabeth's vast clothing collection required

a huge retinue of staff to look after it.

One man was employed just to look after her muffs.

So, considering the sheer number of her dresses,

it's quite remarkable that none survived today.

At Westminster Abbey, though,

the resting place of the royals for the last 1,000 years,

you do get a tantalising and intimate glimpse of one single item.

This is one of the very earliest surviving bits of royal clothing -

we've still got it

because of the weird tradition of the funeral effigy.

This was a model of the dead King or Queen that was made to be carried

in their funeral procession to Westminster Abbey.

Elizabeth I's head is missing, but originally it was painted

and coloured so beautifully

that it apparently looked like she was still alive.

And her figure was dressed in her coronation robes

and underneath that, specially constructed underwear.

This corset-type thing,

called a set of stays, doesn't look like much, but it is remarkable.

Originally it was a very high-status item.

It's made with many, many strips of whale bone for support

that have been sewed into it very carefully

with a huge amount of labour.

And it's extraordinary to think that this represents

the body of a woman who was 70 years old.

It forces the flesh into a very unnatural, long, narrow shape.

Which was partly Elizabethan fashion,

but it was also the Queen wanting to create

a very strange and otherworldly image for herself.

Elizabeth's underwear was originally only seen

by her ladies-in-waiting.

And it's only when the effigy was conserved

that this intimate item was accidently discovered.

The stays are exciting

because they formed the foundation

for an incredible number of layers above

that would construct Elizabeth's unique silhouette.

How long do you think it would take, Mark,

for Elizabeth I to get totally Queen-ed up, start to finish?

Oh, gosh, well, she's not in a rush, so I'd imagine,

probably about two hours.

Of course, it's not just the clothes,

it's the jewellery, the make-up, the wig,

the entire ensemble to be the Queen, about two hours.

And here I am in my satin-coloured body, that's its name, isn't it?

-A pair of bodies even.

-A pair of bodies.

And covered in fine fabric, because of course it's the Queen's.

It's an awfully long and narrow shape,

they're not at all like Victorian stays that give you a lovely waist.

No, or indeed a lovely cleavage, it's a different look.

And what's next - bum roll?

Exactly. You're the Queen, it's covered in silk velvet.

-Velvet - it's like a massive travel pillow, isn't it?

-Indeed.

A giant could sleep like this on the aeroplane.

No neck ache in that. But bring it down, and unlike a Victorian one,

which would rest right down the corset, this just in the middle.

And we're looking for a cone shape.

That's exactly what these garments achieve, it makes you more and more

like an insect, bizarre shape of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean age.

-There we are.

-And what's the point of the bum roll?

It seems to be that the more space you have, the richer you are,

so you're making so much space here, no-one can get close to you.

You'll have to walk very slowly anyway,

because no gentleman or lady would hurry - servants do that.

So, now I've got my soft hips, I can bump into things,

if it's late at night. What comes next - is it the hoops?

It is - the farthingale.

These shapes are made of osier,

the same as they use in barrels, these big circles of wood.

So this is wood inside, big, round, wooden circles?

That's right. Over your head.

-Does it do up at the back or at the front?

-At the front.

It's got to nestle just on top of the bum pad

and go all the way down to give you that shape,

taking up even more space.

Of course, it's quite improper that a gentleman should dress you, or even a man like myself.

Of course, it's an immensely titillating sight for you, isn't it?

It certainly is. I'm doing my best to control myself.

-How do you feel?

-I feel...

rather Queenly.

Now the petticoat, Lucy.

And this is beautiful, this is the four-part

and it's white and gold, as you see.

The back is of silk,

it's not as good as the front, but it's pretty good,

but no-one sees it except the ladies who are dressing you.

-Only I know that I have a silken bottom?

-Indeed. OK, all right?

Now, Lucy, turn around and give us a twirl.

-Does my bum look big in this?

-HE LAUGHS

Now, let's imprison those wandering hands of yours

in miles and miles of velvet.

Hang onto your cuffs cos this is jolly heavy.

-Oh, there we are. Are you in?

-Whoa!

Now, how does that feel?

Very cosy.

It looks good on you, colour-wise.

Impossible, most of these dresses, for people to get into themselves.

And now for your so-called cartwheel ruff...Your Majesty.

Forgive my trembling hands.

You know, it really works, all of this gear.

Cos I do actually feel extremely Queen-like.

You look it too. Queen of hearts. Ah, yes, excellent.

Behead that man and give that lady a peerage.

Very good, madam.

Ah, lovely!

Elizabeth I's dresses literally dazzled the eyes

of her 16th-century courtiers and visitors.

This dress alone was covered with 800 freshwater pearls

and that's not including the jewellery she wore on top.

As a result, Elizabeth's wardrobe became legendary,

even in her own lifetime.

In 1600, when the Moravian Baron Wolfstein visited England,

he said his sole object had been to win an audience with the Queen.

And afterwards he said that she had been glittering

with the glory of majesty

and she had been adorned all over with precious jewels and gems.

Elizabethan fashion not only bolstered

the international reputation of the Queen herself,

but also her entire court.

She used clothes to construct her own personal image,

but expected the rest of her court to follow her lead.

A gentleman's suit, appropriate for court wear,

would cost as much as a year's rent on his London town house.

To maintain standards, Elizabeth even passed laws

on what people should, and importantly, should not wear.

Elizabeth wanted her courtiers to look good,

but she didn't want them getting above their station.

So she passed no less than ten Statutes of Apparel -

laws that said who could wear what, at what rank of society.

So here is a 16th-century Act of Parliament

against the inordinate use of apparel.

It says here that if you want to wear cloth of gold,

you have to be an Earl or above that in status.

If you want to wear fur on your clothes,

you have to be worth at least £100 a year.

And I also like the impression it gives

that the Queen can see you even in your bedroom.

Woe betide you if you are worth less than £20 a year

and if you wear the sumptuous fabric of silk on your night cap.

Elizabeth's wardrobe really proves

how royal dress has the power to make a monarch.

Her image contributed to the longevity of her 44-year reign

and the relative peace and prosperity that the country enjoyed throughout.

But the wardrobes of her successors, the Stuarts,

show how clothes could contribute to the breaking-up of a monarchy.

By the early 17th century,

the royal wardrobe of Charles I had become a symbol for excess and vice.

In 1633, Parliament ordered an inquiry

into the accounts of the royal wardrobe

and they discovered that money had been siphoned off.

It had been spent on unauthorised days out and other jollies.

Basically it was a 17th-century expenses scandal.

In the 16th century,

the Tudor monarchs had kept their artists on a tight rein.

They, and they alone, had determined how they should be painted.

But the rise of the printing press

and the sale of illustrated pamphlets on street corners

meant that the Stuart image would be treated less respectfully.

And court fashion became part of the political battle ground.

Now, these pictures from satirical pamphlets

show the power of dress and particularly accusations

about the lavishness of dress and the role it played

in the propaganda war leading up to the actual, physical Civil War.

This gentleman in this picture is a Cavalier, he fights for the King.

And the artist is basically saying that, with all of his clothes

and all of his styling, the gentleman is a twit,

because look at what he's wearing.

The key tells us that he's wearing a silly hat,

it looks like a closed stool pan,

or a toilet pan, set on the top of his noodle.

It says here that he's wearing a long-waisted doublet,

unbuttoned halfway.

Now, that's shades of Simon Cowell

and the button's a bit too open on the shirt.

He's got in his hand a stick, playing with it -

we know what that means.

And he's also wearing a great big pair of spurs,

so you hear him coming along -

he jingles like a morris dancer as he approaches.

So basically he is absolutely ridiculous.

In this other pamphlet, the thing is getting a little bit more serious,

because here we've got the Civil War as an allegory of a dogfight.

What I really like about this image

is the way that the dogs and their masters have

exactly the same haircuts. Look, the Cavaliers have got

long, wavy, curly hair, and so too has their dog,

whereas the Roundhead dog, he has exactly the same

pudding basin-type haircut as his Parliamentarian masters.

Now, the luxurious clothing of the King and his Cavaliers

did not lead directly to the Civil War,

but negative comment about their wardrobes opened the way for

other, much more serious, complaints that ended in armed rebellion.

So it might sound surprising

that right at the end of Charles I's life,

when he was incarcerated and awaiting trial,

he was still thinking about his wardrobe.

You might think that Charles I, defeated, in prison,

would have other things on his mind apart from his clothes.

But when he heard he was to be brought to London for his trial,

what does he do? He orders a new velvet suit

covered all over in gold embroidery.

He still wanted to make a regal, a kingly impression.

The King's trial ended with the order for his execution.

It was to take place on 30th January 1649.

That morning, he dressed with great care.

He put on two shirts, because it was very cold that day

and he didn't want anyone to see him shivering on the scaffold.

He was brought here to the Palace of Whitehall,

and his guards marched him through the galleries,

through this very door into the Banqueting House,

the last room that Charles I would ever see.

The King was frog-marched through this space

and out through a hole in the wall that had been made,

leading onto a scaffold erected in the street outside.

There, he said his last prayers, he took off his hat,

he moved his long hair out of the way to bare his neck.

And he gave his gloves to his friend, Archbishop Juxon.

Then he knelt down and put his head on the block,

it was very low, he was almost lying on his stomach.

And then the axe came down.

Fashion and clothing were central to Charles I's kingship

and its power was revealed most fully

by what happened to his wardrobe following his execution.

After the King's death, there was a great deal of interest

in what was going to happen to his clothes.

People started to collect them.

And so we have the cap he wore

when he was captured by the Parliamentarians.

Even more excitingly, we've got fragments of the cloak he wore

on the morning of his execution.

And those gloves he gave to Archbishop Juxon,

well, here they are.

But hang on a minute...

These are also said to have been the gloves he wore

on the morning of the execution.

And if you go to Lambeth Palace, they've got a third pair there.

Now, clearly he wasn't wearing three pairs of gloves

and clearly not all of these things can be real,

but that's not really the point.

To the supporters of the defeated King Charles,

these items of royal clothing had such power,

they had such significance

that people venerated them, like the relics of a holy saint.

Now, for first and only time in the last thousand years,

the country was without a monarch.

To many people, the monarchy itself was dead and gone

with all its pomp and ceremony,

including props such as royal clothing.

This is the iconic image of Oliver Cromwell.

The original was painted by Sir Peter Lely,

who ironically was a court painter.

But when Cromwell went about having his picture painted,

he did it in quite a different way to, say, Elizabeth I.

He's supposed to have said to Lely,

"You've got to show me as I really am, warts and all."

And it seems like he got his way - look at that giant wart on his chin.

Cromwell's portrait suggests that he wanted to distance himself

from the extravagant image of his royal rivals.

And his supporters preserved relics that promoted this image.

So, John, this is the actual hat of Oliver Cromwell?

Well, we'd like to think so,

but actually if you look at it,

-it's really a bit too small.

-Oh!

-I know.

It's definitely a hat of the period, though.

-It's more likely to be a woman's or a child's hat.

-Oh, no!

-Wouldn't have fitted on his big head?

-I don't think so.

John, you are such a spoilsport.

-I know.

-But these really do have to be his rather lovely gloves?

Could be, there's a label inside them which says that they were given

by a gentleman in Huntingdon in 1704 and they were given to a member

of the Cromwell family, so they were believed to be Cromwell's gloves.

And they're still believed to be Cromwell's gloves.

I want them to be Cromwell's gloves because they fit in with

my idea of him - they're sort of rufty-tufty, they're leather,

not fancy, they look practical.

I imagine that a man who wanted himself painted warts and all

would have worn gloves like this.

I think that's the point, really,

they perhaps fit in with the image, the warts-and-all image,

which by the 18th century is what people probably thought

Cromwell might have said, ought to have said, and therefore did say.

Whether these clothes actually were Cromwell's or not,

they projected the image that his supporters wanted -

a simple man, full of Puritan virtue.

In reality, though, things were rather different.

As a ruler, Cromwell adopted many of the trappings of being a king.

He didn't know what else to do,

there were no other models to follow.

And when he died, his supporters even buried him with a crown.

The Commonwealth really died with Cromwell

and the country's republican experiment ended with

the return of Charles II to reclaim his father's throne.

But Charles's new subjects noticed that he was anxious to avoid

making the same mistakes as his father

and that even filtered through to his fashion sense.

In his diary for 1666, Samuel Pepys tells us about something

unprecedented that the King did in one of his council meetings.

Charles II had declared his resolution of setting

a brand-new fashion for clothes, for everybody at court.

He did this to teach the nobility thrift, which Samuel Pepys,

and presumably the rest of the population,

thought was a very good thing.

Charles II was introducing a new kind of outfit - the suit.

Although the suit's decoration could be quite the opposite of thrifty.

Susan, this suit is covered all over with silver embroidery,

that's a bit over the top, isn't it?

Well, it was worn for an important occasion

by the brother of Charles II - James -

when he was Duke of York, when he married in 1673.

Imagine him coming into a candlelit room,

he must have glistened all over like a Christmas tree.

Well, yes, and perhaps even more so when the coat and breeches

were first made as the threads were that much brighter and sparkling.

What's so new about this as an outfit of clothes?

What's remarkable for a royal dress is the fact that it's a coat

he's wearing with his breeches, and not a doublet.

So the doublet would have been a tight little jacket

and then big, baggy breeches.

Yes, and then the doublet, by this time, sort of ends

barely at the waistline.

So perhaps it was a good opportunity for Charles to set something new,

maybe the doublet was too reminiscent of the old court, of his father.

Here was a chance to establish a look that would be uniquely

identified with him, an outfit that everybody was desperate to wear

and thinks is really cool and stylish.

Where did Charles II, then, get his fashion sense?

Clearly he was a fashionable sort of fellow.

Well, he did very significantly spend time at the court of Louis XIV.

Louis was recognised as being

the style leader for absolutely everything,

including clothing, and was quite dictatorial about

what people were allowed to wear and how they were to present themselves.

Surely emulating someone who's a bit dictatorial about fashion

isn't a very good idea for Charles II

cos he's seen his father be dictatorial and get his head chopped off as a result.

Well, certainly he must have taken that into account,

but on the other hand, it's not something that's decreed,

he doesn't enforce the wearing of this garment.

So is it fair to say that Louis XIV is going, "Courtiers, wear what I want."

He's using the French stick if you like.

And then we've got Charles II in London making everybody

want to wear the suit because it looks so good.

-He's using the carrot.

-Yes, absolutely.

We've got the French stick or the English carrot.

Which do you prefer?

Well, I think we'd all go for the English carrot, wouldn't we?

Good answer.

Now, Charles II may be remembered as the jolly old merry monarch,

but I believe that he was a particularly canny king.

He cleverly distanced himself from his father, Charles I,

and also from contemporary absolutist monarchs, like Louis XIV.

And Charles II marks a real turning point for the British monarchy.

His predecessors had all believed

that they had a God-given right to rule.

But from Charles II onwards,

every British monarch knew that he nor she was no longer top dog,

and that he or she had to rule

by paying a nod to the power of their people.

After the Civil War,

Charles had realised that monarchs could no longer power-dress,

like Elizabeth I, because they simply didn't wield as much power.

But they were still left with the pomp.

As a trilogy of Georges navigated their way through the 18th century,

gentlemen sported the new sensible suits,

while ladies did quite the opposite.

Now, Eleri, what is this extraordinary object?

This is an 18th-century version of an underskirt

known as a side hoop or panniers.

It was worn to create a very extravagant skirt shape.

So, my body, my waist, goes in that hole there, right?

You stand in there

and then this drawstring gathers around your waist.

-And you tie that up?

-Absolutely.

-Is this whalebone under here?

-Yes.

-It's quite a flexible thing.

Exactly, it's what creates the shape.

Although it doesn't look very much,

it's actually quite a special luxury garment.

And it's amazing that underwear like this survives from the 18th century.

It's very rare.

And what kind of a dress would have gone on top?

An extraordinary dress called the court mantua.

Tell me about this, it's almost ridiculous,

the size and shape of this thing,

it must be the least practical dress ever.

Absolutely, but that's sort of the point,

is that the person who was wearing this was obviously rich enough

and important enough not to wear practical clothes.

You couldn't do a shred of work in this, in fact you could barely move.

They were wearing these dresses at the Georgian court

and they became something of a uniform, didn't they?

They did, it was actually prescribed, and there were very strict rules of etiquette

about what sorts of dresses you should wear

and women had to wear these mantuas,

pretty much for most of the 18th century.

I've read that the courtiers complained about all the ruffles

and the frills getting in the way of any sort of activity

they wanted to be doing. What about this particular silk

that's been woven here, what's the significance of it?

This particular silk is a very expensive one,

because of the complexity of the weave, there aren't that many

repeating patterns within it,

which to the trained eye at court

would signify very rarefied sensibility and also a lot of money.

This one's pretty wide, is this as extreme as mantuas get?

You did get skirts that came out

at complete right angles to the waist and then down.

-A big walking oblong?

-Absolutely.

Do you think then, I get the sense that by the late Georgian period,

going to court must have been a bit like going to the zoo,

like the dinosaurs are still walking the earth

wearing these crazy outmoded dresses.

But that was part of maintaining at court

this splendour of the 18th century, because everything about the court

and society changed so much during that century

that it was a way of preserving in aspic

the ceremony associated with court.

This has to be the world's least practical dress.

When you came to court you had to follow an extremely strict

code of behaviour.

You'd be coached beforehand by your dancing master.

So one court lady tells us

that if a hairpin was pricking your scalp,

you couldn't pull it out - you had to put up with the pain.

If it got really bad, then you could bite the inside of your cheek

and swallow the blood as a diversion.

So what were the rules of wearing a dress like this?

Well, firstly, there were no chairs in the room -

it's contrary to etiquette to sit down in the royal presence,

so you had to stand for hours in your heavy hoops

and also in your high-heeled shoes.

You mustn't cross your arms, that's a complete no-no,

as is turning your back on the King or Queen.

If you wanted to leave the room, you had to ask permission,

and if it was given, you had to curtsy three times

and then back out of the room,

avoiding collisions with other ladies

in their hoops, and getting yourself straight out of the door.

Everybody wants to know how the court ladies went to the loo,

and the answer is they're not yet wearing knickers,

which haven't been invented.

So they ARE able to use the chamber pot.

But to do this, you're supposed to ask for permission and withdraw

to the anteroom, and permission is not necessarily forthcoming.

Once, one of Queen Caroline's ladies

was refused permission to withdraw,

and a few minutes later,

a humiliating puddle appeared from underneath her mantua,

and this is the contemporary quotation -

"It threatens the shoes of bystanders."

By the end of the 18th century,

courtly dress had become a source of derision.

The royal wardrobe was becoming

less and less relevant to the outside world -

and so too was the monarchy itself.

The population might have laughed a lot more

if the royal joke hadn't been quite literally at their expense.

This is the Prince Regent,

the future George IV,

standing in for his dad while he was mad.

You may remember him as the Hugh Laurie character in Blackadder -

in other words, a bit of a twit.

When he finally became King in 1820

he put on the most wonderful coronation,

it was an enormous spectacle that everybody enjoyed,

until they discovered how much it had cost.

He spent £25,000 on his robes that he only wore for a few hours.

George IV was a very stylish man.

As his wife said, it was just a shame that he had to be King,

he would have made a much better hairdresser.

MUSIC: "Zadok the Priest" by Handel

Now, if I had to imagine the slippers

of that bling lover George IV,

this is what I would come up with.

Yeah, definitely, and I like how they match the pink,

sort of salmon-pinky lining to the silver tops.

Oh, look, there's a pink lining as well, look at that.

And they glitter - and you've got a matching gold pair over there.

Yes, with a yellow lining.

And then most importantly we have George's actual coronation shoes.

The moment of becoming King he was wearing these shoes -

and they're silver again,

and they have the little red heels of royalty.

Now, this was the greatest show on earth, wasn't it?

Tell me more about it.

I think it looked spectacular but I think it also looked a bit strange,

because what George did, he made all the courtiers wear some

sort of historic fancy dress outfit, some sort of Tudor/Stuarty number.

Was this dignified for a poor aged peer with knobbly knees

to be sent out in tight stockings?

Probably not. I mean, I guess they weren't all old,

there were probably some men with really nice knees and nice legs...

But it has an air of sort of theatre fancy dress about it, I think.

Did they have to pay for their own costumes?

As far as I understand, they did.

I've read somewhere that one of these could cost up to £250,

that's a lot of money.

What did people really think of George's love of clothes?

I think they thought it was a bit undignified for a king.

You should maybe occupy your thoughts with other things

than the cut of your pantaloons or your cravats.

He was too busy fussing round with his buttons?

I think that was what a lot of people thought.

What happened to his fabulous wardrobe after he died?

Well, quite a lot was sold off. So we happen to have

an auction catalogue, which lists some of the things he had.

He had 28 white waistcoats, of which we have three.

But why did he need 28 white waistcoats?

Well, that's a good question, why does anyone need 28 waistcoats?

One of them is here, and if you open it up you can actually see

it says here PR for Prince Regent and you can see how big it is.

It's large!

But what is really bizarre in here, there is

one lot that you could buy -

"two masquerade nun's dresses and a red petticoat."

-What he was doing with the nun's dresses?

-I have absolutely no idea.

Maybe he went somewhere dressed up as a nun.

-Oh, that's a brilliant image, isn't it?!

-Rather large nun.

All this meant that when the King died, he wasn't much mourned.

This book written about him, the year after his death,

says that to George IV the cut of a coat

became of greater consequence

than the amelioration of the condition of Ireland.

He cared more about the tie of a neckcloth

than he did about parliamentary reform.

Instead of governing the country, he'd spend all morning

talking with his tailor

about the merits of loose trousers over tight pantaloons.

His obituary in The Times newspaper claimed that,

"Never was an individual regretted less by his people

"than this deceased King.

"What eye has wept for him?"

George IV was the least popular King since Charles I,

and his wasteful and egotistical attitude to clothes

was one of the reasons that the monarchy's image

reached such a low point in the early 19th century.

An increasingly critical press

meant that people were more aware than ever

of what the royals were up to.

Yet the monarchy's status was about to be transformed -

by a rather unlikely figure.

If you were asked to name the most clothes-obsessed, image-conscious

King or Queen, you probably wouldn't come up with Queen Victoria.

Most people think of her as a little old lady dressed in black,

looking like a potato,

but actually she loved clothes,

and Queen Victoria is the woman who gave us the white wedding dress.

Victoria may be remembered as the widow in black,

but at her wedding she abandoned the convention

of wearing royal robes.

She chose instead her white dress,

and even designed her bridesmaids' outfits.

But it wasn't all black and white in Victoria's wardrobe.

Deirdre, this is not our idea of Queen Victoria, is it?

She's pretty short and she's pretty teeny-tiny round the waist.

Look how small that is.

She is. Well, she wore this dress when she was about 16 years old,

-so it is pretty teeny-tiny.

-It's so cute.

It is cute. She was five foot one and three-quarters,

and the sleeves are very beautifully puffed

as any 1830s evening gown would be.

The silhouette of the dress is also off the shoulder

and creates a very beautiful line around her neckline.

It's possible she wore it the first time she met Prince Albert.

That's so romantic.

But what do you think she thought of fashion?

She really doesn't

have a place on the best dressed list of queens of history, does she?

She was certainly very, very interested in fashion

and extremely aware of the power

that fashion had in shaping public opinion.

For big public occasions she always wore British,

and that was something that was always clearly identified

in newspaper articles describing her clothes for any particular event.

Do you think that Queen Victoria

self-consciously constructed her image?

Definitely. She was absolutely obsessed with theatre, to the point

where she actually dressed her family and friends as well.

So say for instance... This is the christening of Princess Vicky,

her eldest daughter,

and you can see that the Queen is here

wearing a very magnificent dress in silver and gold,

looking very Queen-like.

But it's also a very special group,

distinguished by their unified clothing in silver, gold and white.

And again, when Queen Victoria visited Scotland in 1842,

she went to Drummond Castle for this enormous ball

-where everyone wore tartan, except for her.

-Oh!

It says here her dress was composed of rich Spitalfields silk

of a pale pink.

Are you saying that she outclassed everybody else?

Not necessarily that she outclassed everyone else

but she's certainly dressing to stand out here.

She had worn tartan throughout the entire visit to Scotland in 1842.

For days on end she's dressed from head to toe in tartan,

and on the biggest day of the entire visit

she decides to wear pale pink in front of a backdrop of tartan.

Mmm. That sounds rather lovely, doesn't it?

Micro-managing her own and her family's wardrobe

helped Queen Victoria to win over the hearts of her people,

and to make the monarchy popular once again.

Victoria understood not only the power of dress,

but also the power of the press.

Here's a letter from Queen Victoria to her son,

about her belief in the power of dress.

She says it's "the one outward sign

"from which people can and often do judge

"the inward state of mind" of a person.

And it's of particular importance in persons of high rank.

So, she says to him, "We do expect that you will never wear

"anything extravagant or slang," as she puts it,

too casual - "because that would prove a want of self-respect

"and be an offence against decency."

Like Elizabeth I, Victoria made careful clothing choices

that played well to her people.

And like Elizabeth, Victoria enjoyed a long and stable reign.

She knew that her dresses would make their impact

through newspaper reports.

With expanding readerships, and the introduction of photography,

she, her family and their descendents

would be under closer scrutiny than ever before.

Though some of her successors were less prudent,

and the results for the monarchy were nearly catastrophic.

This is a gentleman's suit from the 1930s.

Now, you might think that it's a bit loud -

look at this houndstooth in the tweed -

and you can imagine

Bertie Wooster perhaps going out in a suit like this,

but it isn't actually offensive to our eyes.

At the time, though, the establishment thought that this suit

was scandalous - as they did also its owner, who was Edward VIII.

Edward VIII's approach to clothing was rather like George IV's.

His relationship with the American divorcee Wallis Simpson

was the real reason that he abdicated in 1936.

But Edward's playboy lifestyle, and the wardrobe that he favoured -

here at his golf club, for example -

had caused concern much earlier on.

Shaun - looking at these photos of the Prince of Wales,

the future Edward VIII,

he looks pretty smart in all of them I'd say,

I'd say that was a pretty smart jacket there.

What was the problem with this?

Well, in today's conventions it IS a smart jacket,

it's a Glen plaid jacket.

But tweeds, Glen plaids like this,

it was wear for the country, it wasn't city wear

and he was wearing these things

outside the place they were supposed to be worn

and that's where he was pushing boundaries.

So is that like turning up to Royal Ascot wearing a shell suit?

I don't think it's quite as extreme as that,

but certainly it would have been... It was about the appropriateness.

So at a time when he would have been inspecting the troops

and he should have been wearing something formal, perhaps uniform,

in this image he's wearing a double-breasted jacket,

which again we think of being rather conventional,

but he's wearing it with a pair of shepherd tweed trousers.

The fashion convention was for narrower Edwardian trousers

that his father would have worn.

-These are bags.

-They are bags, absolutely,

and he very much pushed this boundary with his trousers.

And his biography says he doesn't wear bags as such...

Those are baggy trousers!

..but they are very baggy trousers and in fact, while he had his jackets

made at a tailor in London, Scholte's,

he had his trousers made by an American tailor,

he didn't like the cut and had them flown over.

-That's so profligate!

-Absolutely.

What Wallis Simpson called his pants across the ocean.

No way! His pants across the ocean. That's brilliant.

Look at the contrast with this very formal-looking gentleman here.

And the bowler hat as well -

while we think of that as being, you know, the epitome of British

tradition, it started off as a hat for the country, for servants.

He's wearing it in town, wearing it to inspect the troops.

He started to wear knitwear.

He had popularised Fair Isle knitwear,

certainly in golf and then into other forms of leisure.

You are wearing his legacy today.

Indeed. So it just shows, doesn't it, how important he was?

This seems like the iconic image to me - because what is he doing?

He's got off an aeroplane, he's wearing a very stylish suit,

he's got this funny little dog with him

and he's doing something very camp with his arm.

He is, and he was the modern man.

This for me sums up Edward VIII - would you have employed him

at the London College of Fashion?

Absolutely!

-I'd employ him as my tailor. As my dresser.

-He should have YOUR job!

Now, obviously Edward VIII didn't abdicate

because he spent too much time on the golf course,

or because of his fondness for knitwear.

But in the eyes of the establishment these things were symptomatic.

To them, Edward VIII was too fashionable, he was too "slang".

If he wasn't dressed like a royal,

people thought he wasn't behaving like a royal,

and this was morally lax.

Edward's love of clothes kicked off a debate that would affect

the wardrobe choices of every young royal from then until now -

how to respond to fashion.

It was something that the present Queen had to deal with

from an early age,

when Britain's wardrobes were invaded by -

quelle horreur - the French fashion house Dior.

Having wowed Parisian audiences with his sumptuous yet controversial

New Look in 1947,

Christian Dior then unleashed it upon the British public.

Dior's New Look was pretty controversial.

In Paris, some of his models had their clothes

ripped from their bodies by disapproving crowds.

And in London, the head of the Board of Trade

thought that this was a ridiculously profligate use of fabric

when rationing was still in force.

The trouble was, though, that every female fashion lover in London

loved this - including the female members of the royal family.

While Dior's trip to London caused a public frenzy,

there was something secret going on behind the scenes.

One day he packs up all of his dresses into bags,

and he sneaks out the back of his hotel,

to travel across London to the French Embassy.

And there he put on a private showing of his collection,

to a whole gaggle of royals

including the Duchess of Kent and Princess Margaret.

But apparently one person was conspicuous by her absence -

that was Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen.

It was acceptable for junior royals

to drool over Dior and his French frocks,

but apparently it wasn't all right for the heir to the British throne.

Princess Elizabeth's younger sister Margaret

was the one with the freedom to frolic with fashion.

Princess Margaret remained at the front of the fashion pack

for her whole life -

after all, she was married to a fashion photographer.

She went on wearing Dior from the New Look right into the 1970s.

This dress from 1977 is by Dior,

and she wore it at the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations.

Louis Armstrong described the fashion-loving Princess Margaret

as "one hip chick".

I don't think he would have been able to say that

about her elder sister, the Queen.

# Hello, Dolly

# This is Louis, Dolly

# It's so nice to have you back where you belong... #

While Margaret looked exotic, glamorous and cool,

her elder sister realised that with HER position came responsibility.

Like her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria,

Her Majesty the Queen

had to make choices that were conservative and very, very British.

At first she used the designer Norman Hartnell,

who she had inherited from her mother,

before choosing Hardy Amies - whose fashion house still lies

at the heart of British tailoring, on Savile Row.

-OK...

-This is a bit of a treasure trove in here, isn't it?

Yes, this is where the archive, the Hardy Amies archive is kept.

Look at all of this. Ooh, I can see sparkles over here.

Yeah, the colour's so great in here.

This was an evening dress made for the Countess of Dudley,

who in a previous life was the Hollywood film star Maureen Swanson.

What about this one? This is fabulous.

This was made in 1983 for Princess Michael of Kent.

Can I take this one home? I want it.

Look at it, though, look at it. Isn't it wonderful?

That's a dress for a princess, that is.

Just layers of this lace.

And what's in all the boxes up there?

I see HMQ - does that stand for what I think it stands for?

HMQ - the code, Her Majesty the Queen.

So we have a series of boxes of fabric swatches and samples.

The fabrics were never used for anybody else, just the Queen.

Actually, this here is...

This is the Queen's mannequin! Look at that.

-The mannequin says on it, "HMQ".

-Yes.

-This is her.

This is her, this is Her Majesty the Queen. 1962...

Ooh, it's been padded out a little bit since then.

You can see here the Queen's famously small waist.

Yes. She did have a really fantastic waist, a great figure.

And is this the right height?

A little short, I think, but, yes.

Am I taller than the Queen?

Almost the same height. You've got heels on.

You are correct about that.

-And she does have a head.

-Yes, of course. And a crown.

OK. Here we have the Queen's press book.

-Look how big it is, and it says "The Queen".

-Gargantuan press book.

So here we go, from the beginning.

So here - this is the procession almost,

the process of Hardy going to Buckingham Palace.

And there's Hardy in the middle there.

It's obviously quite a moment -

as it says, "Setting off for Buckingham Palace, 1954."

Yes, it was. Hardy Amies was really proud, really proud of his role

designing for the Queen. It was his life's work, really.

What happened when they got to Buckingham Palace?

They would go through the back door, which always really irritated Hardy.

The back door.

He always thought he should have gone through the front.

So they'd go through the back door and meet Her Majesty

with her own team of people, there would have been her own fitter.

So he didn't do it himself?

No. The Queen would have had someone. Yeah.

And he would say, "Maybe do something here with the lapel

"or the hem of the skirt or something, maybe length-wise..."

If you were the Queen's designer then, what were the rules

and regulations that you had to work within?

Well, a huge bonus would be to get a colour right - for example here

the Queen is wearing mauve in Japan

and that's the imperial colour of Japan.

So when Her Majesty stepped from the aircraft wearing this,

the host nation were delighted that she was paying homage to them.

So it's a compliment to the host nation to incorporate

some sort of a reference to their own culture.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

The Queen considered this her working wardrobe.

She wanted to be seen.

Even on a rainy day - we can just see a tip of it there -

an umbrella, normally a transparent umbrella

that the public, her public,

could still see her in all her magnificence.

So that's why she's in the really bright jade and the magenta and

what I would describe as rather a terrible shade of orange.

This incredible tangerine.

"This is your royal duty, you will wear these colours."

Yes - "You will stand out."

And I can't help noticing the iconic

shoes and handbag - the low-heeled shiny pumps, and that old handbag.

He felt that sometimes

that blackness didn't really complement

some of the shades he put the Queen in -

and here we have a shoe,

this is a 1976 court shoe

for Her Majesty.

Mm-hm...

Very importantly, they've been scored on the bottom.

Oh, yes, you can see criss-crosses to stop her from falling over.

They are awfully slippy, those leather soles, aren't they?

-They are. And slightly raised here.

-Must be to support the arches.

-That's right.

-You could stand up all day in that shoe.

Yes. All about comfort, yes.

So if you're the Queen's designer

I imagine that this is a little bit constricting -

is it difficult, is it a bit frustrating, do you think?

I think so. She had a little by-line that said... She'd say to Hardy,

"I don't want to look like the girl on the cover of Vogue",

and by saying that she was saying to Hardy,

"This is too fashionable for me."

The Queen would never have become the clotheshorse

that Hardy longed to dress,

but instead she won respect by sticking to her style.

By wearing the same sort of thing for 70 years,

she has created a timeless look

that's won praise from some of the greatest fashion arbiters.

Miuccia Prada has said that the Queen

is "simply one of the most elegant women in the world."

Just as Queen Victoria commanded,

recent royals have carefully stuck to the rules

about not flirting too much with fashion.

When a member of the royal family DID make the break

and wear foreign fashion,

it was only after the ending of her royal career,

when the world witnessed the most glamorous

and successful clothing sale in history.

The Christie's New York charity auction

of the royal wardrobe of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Meredith, what were the circumstances

of the auction of all of the dresses in 1997?

Well, rather surprising ones - well, I was certainly very surprised

because one sunny morning in September

I was summoned to the man who was running Christie's at the time

who said, "I want you to go down to Kensington Palace,

"Princess Diana's decided to sell her wardrobe."

And I said, "You must be joking."

He said, "I'm not, but I think it's for charity.

"Anyway, she's very excited, you'd better go and meet her."

So I rang up, and a voice answered

and it was Paul Burrell, the butler,

I thought sounding rather kind of pompous.

So off I went,

and she explained her idea of

lessening the load on her wardrobe

by selling a lot of dresses for charity.

Which was a bit of a show stopper, quite frankly,

over a cup of coffee and a bickie.

What do you think her motivation was for doing this?

I think two things - first of all she'd seriously run out of space

in her wardrobe, in her dressing room,

but that's a sort of jokey answer.

The serious answer was, you know, it was the end of one kind of life.

She wasn't going to do state visits any more,

she wasn't going to sort of open things, cut ribbons,

and all of those sort of things could go.

And the third reason I suspect

was that she actually quite wanted to clamber into Chanel and Versace -

she liked French and Italian clothes

and she'd only ever been able to wear,

quite rightly so, English clothes before that.

How did you go about selecting these particular 80 lots?

Well, it was a collaborative effort between me,

the Princess, sometimes Prince William -

who was often down from Eton for dentist's or whatever -

the butler played a part...

We used to have them on racks in the drawing room,

and go through them and eliminate some of them.

Prince William would say, "Mummy, you really can't sell that,

"you've worn it a bit too much."

And then the ones that we sort of selected had tags,

Prince William was told how to tag things by the butler,

so he busily tagged things.

And we finally arrived at the sort of...

we thought pretty much the balance.

So we had some very grand dresses, and some not so grand dresses.

Some things, you might say, were not for everybody,

but for people who wanted to be princesses for a day, I guess.

And the climax of the whole thing was...

The first night, the sale

and the climax was the lot before the end - lot 79,

the...what I call the John Travolta dress

that she danced with John Travolta in the White House,

I think I've actually marked - X marks the spot.

And it's a very famous...

It was dark blue velvet, made by Victor Edelstein

and she looked ravishing in it.

And am I right in saying that at the time that it was sold

it was the most expensive item of clothing ever?

Yes, it was. I'll have to refresh my memory

and it says here we sold it for £222,500,

which is a lot of money.

You wouldn't want to spill your baked beans down that, would you?

No, she always said it's awful going to banquets,

you're always worried about the chicken,

because it's always in a sauce

and you can't tuck a napkin in, can you, if you're

sitting at a kind of state banquet? I did sympathise, I must say.

This is just one of the 80 dresses from the sale,

which made a total of £3,250,000.

It's a green velvet halter neck evening dress

with diamond buttons.

And this and the rest made so much money,

not because they're lovely dresses - which they are -

but because they were royal,

because Diana, Princess of Wales wore them herself.

Her dresses were her personal statements,

this is how she spoke to us.

She even told one of her designers

what went through her mind when she was picking an outfit.

She would think, "What am I communicating if I wear this?"

These words of Princess Diana's

sum up the reason why the royal wardrobe throughout history

has been so important.

For each and every King and Queen, or Prince and Princess,

there's been no such thing as an ordinary dress

or a boring old pair of trousers.

In the eyes of their people,

every single outfit has always been seen as a statement.

Clothing has created their image, and helped determine

whether they've been loved or loathed.

For the royal family, one was,

one is and one probably always will be

what one wears.