Queen Elizabeth II s Coronation Dress Explained

This is Her Majesty the Queen's coronation dress and it was worn on one of the most important and memorable days in the Queen's reign, her coronation, which took place on the 2nd of June 1953. And it's also incredibly significant in the history of British couture, regarded by many as one of the most important designs of the 20th century. The coronation dress was designed by Norman Hartnell, who was an official dressmaker to Her Majesty the Queen and one of the most important designers in 20th century Britain. And he was chosen because he had also created the Queen's wedding dress for her marriage to Prince Philip in 1947 and also because he was particularly skilled at producing dresses to be worn on very significant occasions, largely due to his great skill in combining rich fabrics with beautiful embroideries, which of course suited these very grand and significant events. When Her Majesty the Queen asked Norman Hartnell to design her coronation dress, she gave some simple instructions to him and those were that the dress should conform to the line of her wedding dress, which of course he had designed for her in 1947, and also that the fabric should be of white silk satin. But beyond that he actually had a fairly blank canvas and Hartnell liked to carry out a lot of research and particularly for a dress of such importance. And so he set about studying coronation dresses worn by previous Queen's consort over the centuries and he used this to inform his ideas for how the dress would look. He also thought very carefully about how the dress would be seen on the day, firstly in the vast space of Westminster Abbey, and secondly taking into consideration that the coronation would be fully televised, the first coronation ever to be televised in this manner, so he needed to think about how it would perform under all that scrutiny on that very auspicious day. In addition to Hartnell's research into historic coronation dresses, he also needed to consider what motifs would be incorporated over that plain white silk satin and he actually produced in total nine separate designs for submission to the Queen. Each of the designs differs very slightly in its iconography and in fact when he presented the eighth sketch Her Majesty the Queen was very pleased with it but she made one suggestion. The embroidered motifs should include not just those of the British Isles but also of the realms of Commonwealth countries of which she would also become sovereign and most importantly that those embroidered motifs should be picked out in subtle colours and some of these are very recognisable, the maple leaf of Canada, wattle for Australia and the silver fern for New Zealand and this is what transformed the dress from previous coronation dresses that had been worn by Queen's and Queen's consort into something that was very fresh and modern and is part of the reason perhaps why the design has stood the test of time given that it's now almost 70 years old. Obviously one of the key features of this dress is its absolutely exquisite embroidery and Hartnell had such a talent for combining these rich fabrics and these different types of embroideries to such great effect and there's no better example than Her Majesty's coronation dress and we can see here such a beautiful range of materials from pearls to diamantes, bugle beads and sequins, all of those surrounding those wonderful emblems executed in such an incredible range of coloured silks.