King Charles and Queen Camilla recently visited a captivating fashion exhibition in honor of Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, just ahead of what would have marked the late monarch’s 100th birthday. Titled “Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life In Style,” the exhibition is hosted by the Royal Collection Trust at The King’s Gallery. It showcases over 300 of the Queen’s garments, many being unveiled for the first time. This exhibition is hailed as the most extensive display of the Queen’s fashion ever assembled, featuring iconic pieces like her christening robe, bridesmaid dress, and wedding gown.

Visitors can marvel at Elizabeth’s Coronation dress, the attire she wore for Princess Margaret’s wedding, and the memorable outfit from her playful helicopter jump at the 2012 Olympics. The exhibition chronicles the fashion journey of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, spanning the ten decades of her life. Curator Caroline de Guitaut remarked, “In the year she would have turned 100, this exhibition celebrates Queen Elizabeth’s uniquely British style and her enduring impact on fashion.” Running from April 10 to October 18, the exhibition promises to offer fresh insights into her personal involvement in crafting her wardrobe, highlighting some deeply personal items.

Among the pieces is a specially-tailored maternity evening dress designed to gracefully conceal the future King Charles III in 1948, along with a pair of checkered trousers she favored for private wear at estates like Balmoral and Sandringham. A standout is a rare, see-through plastic coat from the 1960s, so elusive that curators haven’t found a single photograph of her wearing it. The Royal Collection Trust team, under the guidance of de Guitaut, who serves as the Surveyor of the King’s Works of Art, was granted complete access to Queen Elizabeth’s impressive wardrobe of 4,500 pieces. Meticulously conserved throughout her remarkable life, this wardrobe forms a breathtaking exhibition, 18 months in the making, and stands as the largest ever dedicated to the late Queen and her sartorial legacy.

The first few weeks of the exhibition ‘Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life In Style’ have been a sell-out. The late monarch, de Guitaut concedes, was not a woman obsessed with fashion, but after finding herself hailed a style icon became determined to make it work as a tool of her trade. ‘Queen Elizabeth took a deep and thoughtful interest in every aspect of her wardrobe, using fashion as diplomacy while consistently championing the UK’s fashion industry,’ she said. Among the exhibits are Elizabeth’s breathtaking wedding and coronations gowns, including, for the first time, the fan she used in 1953.

Her wedding gown is reunited, for the first time in more than 20 years, with the glittering Queen Mary’s Diamond Fringe tiara (although the arms of the dress have since been replaced as the material had sadly deteriorated). There are eye-catching items, too, such as the Queen’s ‘poodle skirt’ worn for a square dance in Canada, an extraordinary embroidered coat and matching slippers which she wore in Malaysia in 1989 and a purple dress that actually conceals, extraordinarily, a pair of culottes. A maternity evening dress made by Hartnell, dating from around 1948, is a rare example of its type. De Guitant says she was ‘very excited’ to have found it and that the tailoring is so clever that from the front you wouldn’t even have known she was pregnant. ‘It’s quite a rare survival,’ she says.

The display of evening gowns and day dresses for State Visits and banquets is almost overwhelming, many featuring specific colours or national symbols in honour of the countries she was visiting, as well as accessories from her many tours over the years including binoculars, sunglasses and suitcases. The Queen was apparently very much involved in the process of creating her outfits, examining sketches submitted to her and commenting back on the silhouette, or sleeve or skirt length. ‘The Queen would want to see the fabric samples too, she was absolutely insistent on having at her fingertips every single piece of information about how this finished garment might look,’ de Guitaut explained. ‘She became an active master at dressing in a very appropriate way, paying compliments to the host country, honouring the craftsmanship of the place she was visiting.

‘The wearing of this wonderful couture on the global stage was really the greatest possible advert for British production, design and manufacture. ‘She took diplomatic dressing to a whole other level of sophistication which no other monarch had really done to the same degree. She was a trailblazer.’ King Charles will address the nation tomorrow to mark his mother’s birthday. Charles has reportedly penned personal reflections on what he considers his mother’s greatest achievements. This will be accompanied by a touching video montage of poignant moments from her life played on screen. That is expected to include footage from her service during WW2 in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, memories from royal tours around the world and duties at home, and moments from her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022. Charles is said to have invested considerable time curating the list of invitees to the reception, prioritising representatives from organisations and charities with which his mother formed deep connections.