Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Queen Victoria's Shoes and Petticoat

Recently, I posted a YouTube video from the Historic Royal Palaces channel about an Elsa Schiaparelli gown made for  Princess Alice, the Duchess of Gloucester. According to their  YouTube channel page, "Historic Royal Palaces is an independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace and Hillsborough Castle."

Late last week, I found two other videos on the same channel  about garments that had likely belonged to Queen Victoria. One of those two videos is about a pair of formal shoe boots in a pale  blue silk. The other was about a fine cotton petticoat. Both  garments are from the 1830s.  

The shoe video discusses conservation techniques used to  preserve the condition of the shoes and why they were chosen, while the petticoat video went into some detail about the petticoat's construction, including the fineness of the cotton lawn employed and the tiny waist gathers that using such a fine fabric made possible.

I have embedded both videos here. I think that these items are interesting to lovers of historical costume in general, but these two are of particular value to those interested in Western costume of the 1830s. 

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