Real Dresses of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia Romanov | Fashion History

Most people will be familiar with these photographs. They are of the last Romanov family, Nicholas, Alexandra, Alexei and the four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia Nikolaevna. However, less people are familiar with the history behind the clothing and the vast amounts of pieces of clothing which survive today and are currently on display in museums all over the world. Today, join me on a deep dive into the formal clothing worn by the four Grand Duchesses as we explore the history behind them, how they survived and the incredible craftsmanship behind these items of clothing. We're going to be working chronologically from the first items of formal clothing the Grand Duchesses wore in 1904 to the last pieces of surviving formal clothing we have from 1913. I'll also be discussing a bit more pieces of clothing from 1917 and 1918, though these will be more everyday typical pieces of clothing, whereas the rest of video will focus primarily on the formal incredibly beautiful dresses which have survived. I have been looking at these dresses even more than normal as far as a research project that I'm currently working on which, fingers crossed, should be appearing in a journal near you soon. I made a really exciting discovery during the research for this of a brand new dress which has been found by the Hermitage Museum but the reason I was so excited to have found it is because it hadn't been reported on yet by any English-speaking news articles or historians so it kind of felt like a fresh discovery which is a really exciting part of the process. Without further ado, let's begin. These miniature court dresses were worn in 1904 by Olga and Tatiana as part of the christening celebrations for their younger brother Alexei. These are really special as they are miniature versions of which there aren't too many historically which have survived. It was the first time that Tatiana and her elder sister Olga had ever worn court dresses, they were just nine and seven years old. The dresses were cream with dandelion patterns on them as detailing along with silver lattice and a cream silk seam down the middle with buttons. The dresses were also worn with the silver star of Saint Catherine along with its red sash and kokoschnik headdresses. The reason I wanted to include these first is it is kind of the first step that the girls made into a sort of formal life regarding clothing. These are the first items of clothing which are specifically tied to the roles and the duties of a grand duchess which have survived. There are of course lots of baby clothing and infant clothing and even toddler clothing which have survived in the form of baby booties and little shirts which are adorable but I wanted to focus on these dresses first as they are the first sort of evidence that we have in the historical clothing record of the formal life that the grand duchess has led. In 1911 Olga and Tatiana had their formal photo shoot in their regimental clothing. I actually have a photo of it here, I won't get it out of the frame because it's been in this frame for about six months now. These are two of the postcards in my collection, they are probably my favourite postcards in my collection and they sit on my desk just here. Olga was the colonel-in-chief of the 3rd Regiment. Her uniform consisted of a light blue jacket with golden details and a red skirt. On the 18th of August 1913, new style Olga and Tatiana surveyed their troops for the first time on horseback. They were also photographed with their regimental officers and the wives of the regimental officers as part of the day of celebrations. Olga actually wrote a lot of details in her diary about that day including the name of the horses that they rode. Olga's horse was called Regent who had white socks marking on his leg, whereas Tatiana's horse was called Rubino. It seems that Regent was actually Olga's preferred horse, not just a random one from the stables, as during her 1913 diary she writes a lot about going on horse rides with him. Olga finished her diary entry for that day saying that she was so unbelievably happy with today with three exclamation marks. Out of all of the Romanov family, I would say that Olga's diaries and KR's are the most frank, and her writing and saying that she was so unbelievably happy with how well it went, and also letters that she sent during that time saying that she was a bit nervous about how the parade would go but she was really happy with how it went, really show how her mind was thinking. Tatiana was the honorary colonel-in-chief of the 8th Voznesensky Ulands. Tatiana's uniform was a navy blue with a yellow patch down the middle, although in photographs the yellow patch comes up as dark, which you wouldn't really expect for a yellow piece of uniform. So there has been a little bit of debate about that. Tatiana seems to have been the most keen horse rider out of the sisters. In letters to Nicholas during World War I, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia often say that Tatiana was the one who was out riding the most. Nicholas even sent a letter to Tatiana saying that he was glad to hear that she was out riding, but wondered why she wasn't going with her sisters. She simply seemed to be the most keen horse rider of the bunch. Maria was the colonel-in-chief of the Kazansky Dragoons, and in letters to their father, her sisters often call Maria Dragoon in reference to this. Maria was photographed in her regimental uniform in 1915. Similar to her elder sisters, she also rode on horseback overseeing her regiment, and her uniform was a lovely bottle green, blue and gold. The jacket that she wore has been preserved, though during the recent exhibition at the Hermitage Museum, it appears that the skirt was either lost or the one which was on display with it for several years was a replica. Now of course we don't have a uniform for Anastasia, as by the time that she was old enough to have her own regiment day, the family had been in prison during the revolution. However, she was the honorary colonel-in-chief of the 148th infantry. Although we don't have an example of what her uniform would have looked like, we do know what it looked like on some of the soldiers and the officers who were part of that regiment. The 1911 formal court dresses were designed by Olga Nikolaevna Borbenkova, who will be getting a whole video about her and another favourite designer of the Romanovs, August Bryzak. These dresses were designed in 1910 and the children wore them in 1911 for photographs. The dresses consist of a pink pearl pearlescent fabric which really shines in the light at exhibitions, it looks gorgeous. It also has silver intertwined detailing throughout the dresses. All four of the dresses worn by the Grand Duchesses have survived and have been put onto various displays and exhibitions all over the world. Their kokoshniks have also survived and are displayed with them. It looks like that there is a way to tell the kokoshniks apart as to who they belong to, as they are kind of matching on displays. If you didn't know, the girls often had their initials sewn into the dresses to help tell them apart, so that might have been something which happened with the kokoshniks too. This photo is probably most famous for appearing on the front cover of Life magazine when the whole Anna Anderson debacle was appearing. I'm really fond of these dresses, the pink is subtle but shiny enough so that it looks really beautiful and pearlescent and it isn't too overwhelming. This ball dress belonged to one of the big pair, or big ones as Nicholas and Alexandra called them, which is either Olga or Tatiana Nikolaevna. We don't know which sister exactly it belonged to, whether it was Olga or Tatiana, but it has been confirmed that it was at least worn by one of them. The dress was created in France between 1912 and 1914 and was most likely used as a ball gown. Many people say that the grand duchesses never experienced balls or parties of any kind, but their diaries, their letters and even paintings of them show that they went to quite a few balls in their lifetime. Olga talks about dancing until 1am and then the next day having to bathe her feet in warm water because they're so sore. The dress appears to have been specifically tailored to the measurements of the grand duchesses. The waist circumference is exactly 60 centimetres or 23 inches for our American friends and the back of the dress measures 132 centimetres or 51 inches. The dress is pink of colour and comprised mainly of satin with tulle, lace and gauze as accessories. The chest and the fringe are highly beaded and detailed and there is a pliqué in the shape of flowers throughout it. It might have been produced by the House of Frederick which was a fashion designer house in France. This dress is more unusual in that it wasn't made by one of the two favourite designers of the Romanovs which was the House of Madame Olga, Olga Nikolaevna Bourbonkova or the House of Brissac, August Brissac. Prior to the popularity of these two designers, dresses were often imported from France as France was seen as their place of the most fashionable and chic outfits of the day. We do know that Olga did like to wear pink and that she did wear pink dresses to balls. The chief of security Alexander Spiridovich recalled in his memoirs that during her 16th birthday in 1911, Olga Nikolaevna in a pink dress for the first time her hair in a chinon presided over a table. The next dress is probably my favourite, it belonged to Maria Nikolaevna and it is a gorgeous pink evening dress. The dress has been exhibited a few times around the world including the Amsterdam branch of the Hermitage Museum although there isn't as much information about it as there is on other dresses, for example it's not even listed on the Hermitage Museum website which gives us a bit more information such as where it was produced, who it was produced by and what it's made out of. However we do know for a fact that it belonged to Maria Nikolaevna and from close-up photos and videos it looks as if the gore's bodice part had a lot of beaded details whilst the skirt is more plain and made of pink silk which is typical of 20th century fashion. This dress is really interesting to me as it actually has a stain on it, it's intriguing that it was never removed so I wonder if Maria maybe never got around to asking for it to be removed or whether it was an accident that happened by a conservator after the revolution. The fact that the conservators left it on makes me think that it was actually original on the dress or maybe it was too tricky to get it off, we might not ever know but it does provide a bit more intrigue to the dress and the history behind it. I really wish that there was some more information on this dress, I know that it's currently on display at the Hermitage Museum's new exhibition called Otmar and Alexei so hopefully some more information will come out about it through that display. This next dress is the one that I was talking about in the introduction, it's the one I discovered was being exhibited at the Hermitage Museum. Now this dress has never been exhibited or published before and it seems to have only recently been found, perhaps in storage. If you didn't know, the reason why a lot of the clothing of the Grand Duchesses have survived was because during the evacuation of the Alexander and Winter Palaces during World War II, precious pieces of art and furniture were wrapped up in dresses and pieces of clothing used as protective shrouds. The fact that these pieces of clothing existed was sort of an accident. A couple of days ago the dress was confirmed to have belonged to Tatiana Nikolaevna which really surprised me as when I first saw it I was convinced that it was worn by Maria. The styling and the sizing looks a lot more like something that Maria would wear, we already had a pink dress of hers which suggests that she favoured more pink colours whilst Tatiana's favourite colour was decidedly purple which is confirmed in a letter that Pierre Julliat sent to her. Also in their personal photograph albums, Maria and Anastasia coloured in a lot of their photographs and from there we can see that the favourite colours of the girls were reflected in what they wore. Maria wears quite an eclection of colours, mainly greens, blues but sometimes pinks whereas Anastasia really prefers pinks and reds, Tatiana prefers purples and Olga prefers blues and greens and some reds. We do know that some of their clothing were hand-me-downs so I wouldn't be surprised if this dress was originally one of the big pairs and then handed down to either Maria or Anastasia. As of right now the material of the dress, the maker and the sizing hasn't been confirmed in English sources, however when it has been translated and comes out I will leave it in the comment section. I would guess that it was made by August Bryczak, it sort of resembles that style and that fashion. I was so excited to have stumbled across this as I said there was no English-speaking media yet that had picked up on it so that was a big fun discovery for me. It also shows how much that there still is left to uncover. This is the second dress this year which has been found after lying in storage for over a century and the second dress I will talk about in just a moment. This dress is probably the one that you can look at and say yeah that belonged to Tatiana the most. It is a gorgeous silk dress that was made in the workshop of August Bryczak somewhere between 1912 and 1914. August Bryczak was a Russian designer who made custom ball dresses for Aleksandra Fyodorovna and Maria Fyodorovna and then eventually Aleksandra's children. The dress is 134 centimetres in length which matches up with what we know of Tatiana's height. Forensic scientists estimate that she was about 170 centimetres in 1917. Considering that Tatiana would have been the ages of 15 and 17 between 1912 and 1914 I'm more inclined to say that the dress was probably worn towards the 1913 and 1914 end of the spectrum as it matches how girls over the age of 16 wore longer dresses. The dress itself is made of satin, chiffon, lace, glass beads, artificial pearls and fringe. The pearls being artificial is really interesting to me. Obviously there was no shortage of money in the Romanov family to have genuine pearls. This could lean the date a bit more towards 1914 as the Romanovs did adopt a more Russian lifestyle like the rest of Russia was going through during World War I. Tatiana and her sisters received genuine pearls every year on their birthday and their name day so that when they reached the age of 16 they would have a full pearl necklace. Nikolai Vasilyevich Sablin who was an officer on the Stendart yacht said that the pearl necklaces were actually really helpful as by dividing them in two you would know exactly how old the child was. This is another dress that has been exhibited around the world and is also on show in the latest exhibition. 109 years after Olga and Tatiana were photographed in these dresses these gorgeous 1913 formal gowns appeared this year online after being in a Russian archive. These cream gowns have silver pearl and jewel beadings with particular details on the bodice. Olga and Tatiana accessorized these with brooches, jewel necklaces and golden bracelets which were given to them by their parents. These dresses are extremely famous as these are the ones that the girls were photographed in in 1913. These photos were turned into postcards at the time and today are often the basis of icons. These photos are among the most famous of the Romanov family. The fact that these exact dresses which were worn by the big pair have survived is really incredible. The 1913 formal court dresses are probably the most famous dresses which have survived. These dresses were made in the workshop of Madame Olga Nikolayevna Bulbenkova. As I said a video specifically about Madame Olga will be coming but for a short sort of Sparknotes version she specialized in court dresses specifically gold beading. Olga and Tatiana's custom matching court dresses are made of satin and lace with individual artificial flowers sewn into the garments. Although they look very very similar and matching there are slight differences between them. Tatiana's has more lace work especially around the neckline whilst Olga's has more detail around the bodice. A panel of pink velvet with real pearl buttons down the middle is complemented by the velvet and pearl kokoshnik headdresses that the girls wore. These photos were taken as part of the Olga wrote in her diary about how her and Tatiana were going to be wearing adult full-size court dresses for the first time as part of the celebrations. Also Tatiana is wearing a wig in these photographs. She had contracted typhoid and a common treatment back then for illnesses such as typhoid and measles was to shave the hair once it started falling out. Though by December she had stopped wearing her wig full-time as her hair had grown enough to be worn with a simple headband. These dresses continue the trend of their names being stitched into the waist using the same pink detailing which is on the front of the dress. In the formal photographs Olga and Tatiana also wear the Order of Saint Catherine sash and star. These dresses are again ones which have been exhibited multiple times mainly at the Hermitage Museum and as part of the new exhibition at the Hermitage they have once again been given a prominent display. It looks like the photos don't do them justice. The videos that we have of the dresses really convey that they have an almost pearlescent shiny glittery aspect about them and they really shine in the light so I cannot imagine how incredible they must have looked back in 1913 when the girls were wearing them. Unfortunately that is the end of what we have of formal dresses and evening dresses or ball gowns that the children Although they wore these gorgeous rose pattern dresses in 1916 none of them have survived that we're aware of. As the two dresses which were revealed this year to have been hidden away in an archive shows that there might be more just hidden away somewhere. We do have this simple shirt and skirt which belong to Anastasia which were discovered in the Apatiev house after the revolution. To me this simple shirt is just as intriguing as these gorgeous ball dresses because they really show more the more simplistic side of the girls everyday life. Things such as their perfumes, their diaries, even the gramophone that they listen to are really as intriguing to me as the court dresses as they show that even though they were grand duchesses they very much had a more normal side to their life which was devoid of duty. I really hope that one day some of the cardigans that they wore turn up as as suggested by the colourings that Maria and Anastasia did they seem to reflect their favourite colours and their personal tastes so fingers crossed that one day they would turn up. Which item of clothing would you like to see turn up in the archives? As I said I'd really like to see those cardigan combos turn up one day. It also adds on to why the domestic is really fascinating to me as when we go back hundreds of years ago often the clothing that the grand duchesses wore every single day has been lost to time. Portraits of grand duchesses such as Aleksandra Pavlovna show her in these fantastic pieces of clothing and these highly detailed garments whereas you contrast that with the more simple shirts and skirts that Otmar photographed in shows that there was more of a domestic normal side to the girls fashion and by extension their everyday life. As I said at the start I am currently quite preoccupied on a big research project once I've finished it I will be very excited to share more information about that but if you would like to hear more about the project and the public research side of things you can check out my instagram account where I'm sharing my research which is at an imperial girlhood. I am exploring the way that grand duchesses were perceived by the media and the press in contrast to their everyday life and that has a particular focus on Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia though goes back to other grand duchesses such as Anna Petrovna, Aleksandra Pavlovna and their peers. As always all of the sources that I consulted will be at the end of the video and in the description if you want to do more research. There is nothing else left to say apart from thank you so much for joining me on this video I hope you have a really wonderful day and take good care of yourselves.