It’s never easy to choose a dress for your sibling’s wedding. But the stakes are especially high if you happen to be queen: the wedding is televised, and an entire nation (nay, an entire Commonwealth) will take cues from your sartorial decisions.
Such were the pressures on Queen Elizabeth II in the lead up to the 1960 wedding of her sister, Princess Margaret, to photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones. Elizabeth had been queen for seven years, and the event marked the first royal wedding to be captured on television. She tapped British designer Norman Hartnell, who’d created her own wedding dress, for the task. Hartnell crafted a light blue gown with a crinoline skirt, plus a bolero jacket to go on top. Famed British photographer Cecil Beaton captured the queen in this outfit, adorned with gloves, a fabric rose hat, and pearls. Around 300 million people watched the nuptials. An image of Elizabeth, steady and devoted to her family and to the British people, prevailed.
Ensemble worn for the wedding of Princess Margaret, Norman Hartnell, 1960. Credit: © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust. Photo: Paul Bulley.
The famous outfit will go on view next year at the King’s Gallery in London’s Buckingham Palace, in an exhibition titled “Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style.” The show will be the largest display to date of the former monarch’s clothing, some of them never beore seen. The checklist of nearly 200 pieces features items from all 10 decades of her life alongside outfits by contemporary British designers Erdem Moralioglu, Richard Quinn, and Christopher Kane, who took inspiration from her royal wardrobe. These pieces confirm the queen’s enduring influence on British fashion, even in the wake of her 2022 passing.
Sketches and illustrations offer insight into the extensive craft and process that went into dressing the queen. An official publication will include reflections by Moralioglu, Kane, Quinn, former Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and dress historian Amy de la Haye.
In a statement, Kane highlighted the historical and metaphorical importance of the Queen’s closet. “From the decline of the court dressmaker to the rise of couturiers like Hartnell and Hardy Amies, her garments tell the story of Britain and its changing identity through fashion,” he said. “[The wardrobe] offers a masterclass in silhouette, construction, repetition, symbolism and, perhaps most importantly, restraint.”
Transparent rain coat, Hardy Amies, 1960s. © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust. Photo: Jon Stokes.
The exhibition will showcase Elizabeth’s formal attire along with more casual wear. A clear plastic raincoat by Hardy Amies, who’d go on to make costumes for Stanley Kubrick’s futuristic 2001: A Space Odyssey, offers a modern element. It prefigures the queen’s famous color-tipped clear umbrellas, which added brightness to her nation’s famously rainy weather. Amies and the queen worked together for 50 years.
A tweed jacket and Balmoral tartan kilt by Hartnell appears along with his regal off-white designs for both Elizabeth’s own wedding and coronation day. Such pieces lend themselves to exhibition curator Caroline de Guitaut’s thesis that “Queen Elizabeth II’s wardrobe was a masterclass in symbolism, tailoring, and British craftsmanship.”
Princess Elizabeth’s Wedding Dress, Norman Hartnell, 1947. Photo: © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust.
The show provides a striking contrast to “Marie Antoinette Style,” now on view at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum through March 2026. Its tag line, “Shaped by the most fashionable queen in history,” seems to throw a challenge to the British royalty’s sartorial prowess. Ornate and decadent, the British are not. But at the end of the day, it’s Elizabeth who ruled for seven decades. And, of course, kept her head.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
