Inside the Royal Wardrobe by Kate Strasdin

Author:Kate Strasdin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474269957
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Figure 5.2 Alexandra Princess of Wales dressed as Marguerite de Valois for the Devonshire House Ball of 1897, held in celebration of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee (original carte de visite, author’s own collection).

The dress exists now in some fragility at the Museum of London. Made from white satin and richly decorated with an applied polychromatic scheme of sequins and spangles, Alexandra dazzled as Marguerite de Valois of France. Unlike its earlier counterpart, this garment is not identified by a maker’s label.

Unlike a large number of other couture houses and theatrical costumiers who swiftly advertised their clients for the event, none appear to have claimed responsibility for Alexandra’s dress for this event. A clue may lie, however, in a closer study of Alexandra’s daughter Princess Maud’s gown. Maud’s dress remained intact and was featured in the exhibition Style and Splendour; The Wardrobe of Queen Maud of Norway at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was made by the firm Morin Blossier.

A closer study of the image of Alexandra at the ball, next to the photograph of Maud’s dress, reveals that the sleeves appear to be of the same design: strips of satin running lengthways down the arm revealing puffs of white chiffon in between. The satin is decorated with small diamante rosettes which are just discernible along the sleeves of Alexandra’s dress. Morin Blossier was certainly Alexandra’s favourite couture house in the 1890s, evidenced in the accounts ledgers that record the sums paid to her many suppliers. The Parisian establishment’s probable commission is supported in an entry recorded in the wardrobe accounts of 1898. A large retrospective sum of £501/0/8d was paid to Morin Blossier for an order from 1897, the payment for which appears on the first page of the accounts.12

The Princess of Wales’ choice of characterization is once again an interesting one. Marguerite de Valois, born in 1553, was the daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de Medici. Her life was a tumultuous one of an arranged, unhappy marriage, a failed coup d’etat against her brother, imprisonment and divorce, culminating in the publication of her memoirs, prompting widespread scandal at the time. As with Mary however, there was an alternate Marguerite, a fictional construct of greater familiarity perhaps to readers and opera officianadoes of the nineteenth century. La Reine Margot is a fictionalized and indeed romanticized account by Alexandre Dumas of the events surrounding Marguerite’s marriage while Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is based upon an attempt at reconciliation with her husband. The character of Marguerite has a central and heroic role in Meyerbeer’s opera Les Huguenots first shown in 1836. As an opera lover, it may have been this last depiction of the French queen that Alexandra ‘knew’. It was too, according to Ardern Holt, a more generally popular fancy-dress choice, appearing as the first colour plate in Fancy Dresses Described (Holt 1894: 10).

The Devonshire House Ball aspired, through its costumes, to a high point of historical accuracy. Certain commentators stressed the extent to which guests went

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