Discover Royal Women at Fashion Museum Bath: Queen Alexandra/Series

Hello welcome to Royal Women at the Fashion Museum I'm Ellie Summers the Collection Manager here at the Museum and today we're going to be looking at some amazing pieces from the Fashion Museum The Fashion Museum collection worn by members of the British Royal Family includes some 100 000 objects and features dress for women men and children as well as glittering treasures From the 17th century up to cutting-edge fashion by today's designers and makers And one of the jewels of the Fashion Museum is a wonderful collection of royal dress What a fabulous dress It's a fabulous dress this one It belonged to Queen Alexandra who was married to King Edward VII but this was before she became queen Alexandra when she was Princess of Wales in the 1890s This dress actually dates to 1893 And we know it was made by a lesser-known Parisian dressmaker called Maureen Blozier because as you can see here there's a beautiful maker's name tape in the waistband It's lovely to see how it's stitched into the boning of the bodice as well With this it has really nice criss-cross stitching across all of these three central parts Bones which is beautiful This dress was given by Alexandra to her good friend the Countess of Shannon and I believe the Countess of Shannon wore it and it was then passed down through Her family It was worn in the 1930s to fancy dress parties and the owner who was a relative of the Countess of Shannon then eventually decided to gift it to what was then the Museum of Costume and we are now the Fashion Museum But when it arrived it didn't have all of this The embellishment In fact it was considered far too plain to be displayed as is so It was embellished and this beaded trim these sort of fake pearls was added at the sleeves and at the neckline to jazz it up a bit and we actually didn't know this until today There is a A little pocket a hidden pocket in her evening gown Look at that So practical so chic so elegant She was incredibly slender and it wasn't actually that fashionable to be slender Then was it A more fuller figure was the ideal but she didn't try to hide it If anything she accentuated it This embellishment is in such a major contrast to e dress we saw previously which was so plain so elegant and chic and minimal but this one s heavily heavily embellished So I think it really shows a change in the way that Alexandra's Using her dress at this time This is the 1910s so at this point she would be queen or queen consort o Edward VII her husband So yeah there's a real shift isn't there from her being Princess From something very simple classic and very chic to something very very regal with lots of embellishment It's made by a French couturier called Douillet who was based in Paris It was actually made when Alexandra was 66 years old It's still got tha beautiful slender silhouette and her tiny waist which at 66 was quite impressive and it's the height of fashion I've just got to talk about these two lines of beading here because these are all pretending to be ribbons with tassels on the end but they're not free It flows beautifully They are actually pieces of heavy embroidery on this extremely delicate chiffon And the motifs both the edging of these pretend ribbons and the decorations such as the chevro Decorations including arrowhead decorations are all made from beads a specific type of bead called a bugle bead which are those long thin cylindrical beads But here we are the Quee Consort absolutely uses fashion and the height of fashion to emphasize her role and her position her sense of herself