WINTERTHUR, DE.- Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library introduces its Eye on the Iconic exhibition series, which explores a single iconic object. The inaugural Eye on the Iconic exhibition, Royal Splendor: The Coronation Gown from The Crown, features the replica of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation dress worn by Claire Foy in the Netflix series The Crown and examines what makes an object iconic—something that is widely recognized and of note. The dress will be on view through January 7, 2018.
Using the replica gown as a focus object, Royal Splendor examines various meanings of an icon. First, the iconic nature of the original dress and the role it played in history is considered. As viewers of the Netflix series know, the episode featuring the coronation dress depicts not only a dramatized version of the queen and the preparations for the coronation but also the fascinating history of televising the ceremony. The coronation, and therefore the coronation dress, reached more than 277 million viewers around the world. The visibility of the dress in newspapers and magazines, as well as on television, contributed to its iconic status. The iconography, or symbols, incorporated into the dress itself by designer Norman Hartnell and at the suggestion of the queen, are also identified and discussed.
The exhibition also considers the significance of the replica as an icon or representation of the original and why it and other objects are made to celebrate a monarch. While the historical and cultural significance of the original coronation dress is self-evident, this replica has an interesting history too. Before capturing a television audience, the replica dress was used to mark the queen’s Diamond Jubilee, a celebration of her sixtieth anniversary as queen. A literal icon, the replica allows us to look at why commemorative objects play such an important role in our experience and memory of historical events. It also invites us to consider whether it is a convincing representation of the original dress, a fashion icon of the twentieth century.
“Winterthur’s Costumes of Downton Abbey exhibition in 2014, like our much earlier exhibition Fashion in Film: Period Costumes for the Screen in 2006, demonstrated how much our visitors enjoy movie and television costumes. While Royal Splendor will feature a single costume, the new Eye on the Iconic format allows us to discuss why a costume like this one captures our fancy, what makes a dress iconic, and how we use objects to mark historical events,” explained J. Thomas Savage, Director of Museum Affairs at Winterthur.
In addition to historical souvenirs and media that supplement the display of the dress, Winterthur is showing an embroidery sampler of the Robe of Estate that the Royal School of Needlework embroidered with 18 different types of gold thread for the 1953 coronation. This sampler demonstrates the fine embroidery that went into so many of the dresses and robes created for the queen’s coronation and allows visitors to get a close look at this type of embroidery work.
While the original coronation dress was embroidered, Angels Costumes, which was commissioned by the world-famous Harrods to make the gown, employed modern screen-printing and beading techniques to create the replica. Looking at the modern techniques used to make the replica also calls upon the connoisseurship skills that Winterthur teaches. As Winterthur’s recent curatorial fellow Nallelli Guillen pointed out in her exhibition Collecting for the Future: Recent Additions to the Winterthur Collection (on view now in Winterthur’s galleries), modern objects and techniques are often used to illustrate how objects have changed over time.
“While television costumes capture our imagination and bring us closer to a story, this one also connects us to England’s longest reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and to a historical moment that many remember and that people continue to celebrate today,” said Kim Collison, Manager of Exhibitions and Collection Planning and curator of Royal Splendor: The Coronation Gown from The Crown.
