Those of you who love gowns can drop into Queen Elizabeth II's Buckingham Palace summer exhibition. You can gawk at a number of gowns in her wardrobe.
This Fashioning A Reign show will reveal her careful choice of gowns. She has exchanged her "glamorous black ballgowns of her youth as a Princess" and replaced them with "colour and emblems."
So you see about 80 outfits from her long reign this weekend. You can see right from the christening gown to a neon green dress worn during her 90th birthday celebrations.
Her choice of fashionable clothes is like a switch on for diplomacy, carefully using the right symbols, colour and "subtle compliments" to various nations.
She picked the right outfit even for the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, said the show's curator. She was meticulous in selecting a colour that could be totally neutral.
"The philosophy behind the design I believe is to have something in a colour that wouldn't be in any way representative of any of the countries participating," said Caroline de Guitaut. "So that's why the colour is quite unique, that sort of peachy, coraly pink."
A mimosa yellow silk-chiffon dress, Australia's national floral emblem, another with subtle Olympics rings for a Montreal tour in 1976, maple leafs at Canada, tree peonies to China and light green to Ethiopia to complement the flag----these are the various gowns that will be featured in the exhibition. She also insisted that her coronation gown needed to have four coloured emblems of her country, as well as nine dominion symbols.
"It's very much a tool in the female sovereign's power to use," said de Guitaut of fashion.
There will be 80 hats on display, but there will be no shoes or handbags. The show will be running from Saturday, July 23 to October 2.
