When Kensington Palace announced its latest exhibition, Dress Codes: Decoding the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, I was genuinely excited. With a fashion archive said to include over 10,000 pieces spanning five centuries of court life, and the palace itself as a backdrop, there was so much potential to create something truly immersive, educational, and moving. As someone with a deep interest in fashion history, I was ready to be swept away by a grand, immersive celebration of royal and court dress, and its symbolism through time.
But after my much-anticipated visit, I walked away feeling, well … disappointed. What it ended up being was something far more subdued and ultimately, rather underwhelming.
The exhibition features a small selection of undeniably beautiful garments, some of which are rarely on display. For anyone with even a passing interest in fashion history, it’s worth the visit. Yet, for an exhibition so rooted in the grandeur and spectacle of royal ceremonial dress, it feels curiously lacking in atmosphere, scale, and storytelling. The presentation fails to rise to the level of its subject matter, and worse still, of its setting. Kensington Palace is a magnificent canvas — paint on it! What let the experience down wasn’t the collection itself; it was everything else: the cramped layout, the lack of narrative depth, and the missed opportunity to use Kensington Palace. What could have been a rich, layered exploration of history, ceremony, and spectacle felt more like a brief detour, a faint echo of what this exhibition could have been. This piece is an attempt to unravel not only where the exhibition fell short, but also what it might have offered, had it dared to be more ambitious.
A Grand Canvas Held Back by a Small Vision
The potential of Kensington Palace as a storytelling space offers a gigantic canvas to work with, so why wasn’t it used more boldly? The exhibition sets out to explore centuries of royal ceremonial dress, yet the physical experience is confined to just two modest rooms. This is a palace that has played host to monarchs, ministers, courtiers, and dignitaries. It’s a place steeped in grandeur, symbolism, and performance. And yet, the exhibition seems curiously disconnected from its surroundings.
This is all the more surprising given the 2023 exhibition Crown to Couture made full use of the palace’s historic interiors to create a dramatic, immersive journey linking royal pageantry with modern celebrity culture, drawing parallels between court fashion and recent red carpet looks. In contrast, Dress Codes feels very much restrained.
Crown to Couture unfolded across nearly the entire palace, weaving together 18th-century court fashion and contemporary red carpet looks with theatrical flair. One particularly striking moment placed Beyoncé’s 2017 Grammy Awards ensemble — a glittering, goddess-like gown by Peter Dundas — in the Presence Chamber, the very room where the monarch once received courtiers, ministers, and foreign ambassadors. It was a brilliant, almost poetic choice: Queen Bey, displayed in a room once reserved for royal audiences. It was a moment that fused context and content with wit, spectacle, and precision.
Display of Beyoncé’s 2017 Grammy performance dress by Peter Dundas, part of the 2023 exhibition “Crown to Couture” at Kensington Palace.
More examples of how Crown to Couture beautifully embedded its exhibit into the interior of Kensington Palace are Billie Eilish’s 2021 Met Gala gown in the King’s Gallery and Billy Porter’s “Sun God” ensemble in the Cupola Room.
The tulle Oscar de la Renta gown Billie Eilish wore to the Met Gala in 2021 was displayed alongside an 18th-century mantua in the King’s Gallery. This pairing showcased the evolution of formal attire, while simultaneously utilising the grandeur of the King’s Gallery to draw parallels between contemporary red-carpet events and historic court presentations.
The Cupola Room, a space known for its ornate William Kent design, in particular the ceiling, provided the perfect backdrop for Billy Porter’s “Sun God” outfit worn at the 2019 Met Gala. The placement of this ensemble within what is arguably Kensington Palace’s most opulent setting amplified the theatricality of both the attire and the room, creating a dialogue between modern fashion statements and the palace’s historical grandeur.
The Cupola Room at Kensington Palace. Source: hrp.org.uk
These examples from Crown to Couture demonstrate how Kensington Palace’s diverse rooms can be effectively utilised to enhance the storytelling of fashion exhibitions. In contrast, the Dress Codes exhibition’s confinement to just a few rooms represents a missed opportunity to leverage the palace’s rich architectural backdrop to its fullest potential.
It’s not that the garments presented aren’t worthy of attention. Quite the opposite. But when the setting is Kensington Palace, with its grand staircases, state rooms, and centuries of ceremonial tradition, the choice to restrict the exhibition to just 2 – 3 rooms feels like a missed opportunity — one that left me wondering what could have been achieved with greater spatial ambition and curatorial confidence.
A Collection of Treasures Lacking in Depth and Context
Despite the stunning garments on display, the real issue with Dress Codes lies in the lack of depth and context surrounding the collection. The full title of the exhibition is “Decoding the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection”, however, the level of decoding is very surface level. As beautiful as the pieces are, they’re presented without much narrative or connection to the broader historical, social, and cultural landscape they emerged from. This is a collection that spans five centuries of royal ceremonial dress, and yet, it feels strangely disconnected from the very history it should be illuminating.
While the exhibition brings together some extraordinary garments, including an 18th-century court dress, a 1928 gown by Reville Ltd, and more recent pieces worn by the royal family, these treasures are displayed with minimal explanation or context. The curatorial decisions, though visually appealing in some cases, leave much to be desired in terms of offering viewers a deeper understanding of the significance of these pieces. What made these garments important at the time they were worn? How did they reflect the social, political, and cultural climates of their eras? These are questions that went largely unanswered in the exhibition. I fully recognise that the amount of historical context and storytelling is limited. There’s only so much text that can be presented to a casual visitor without overwhelming them. However, in this case, I do wish they had gone just a little bit deeper, and had offered visitors more than just a cursory glance at these extraordinary garments that goes beyond when, where, and by whom they were worn, thus allowing visitors to truly understand their significance in history. This is where a more visually driven approach to how the pieces are presented could’ve supported the vision, while keeping the texts on plaques to a minimum.
Fashion is so much more than just fabric and embellishments. It’s a visual language — a means of communicating power, status, gender, and sometimes rebellion. Yet, there’s little exploration of how these garments conveyed messages about the people who wore them or the times they lived through. For example, the stunning 1928 Reville Ltd court dress, worn by Mary Francis Swire (Lady Holcroft), could have been explored in more detail to give insight into not just the craftsmanship, but the role of court fashion in the 1920s, the history of the presentation of debutantes at court, the dress codes connected with this ceremony, and how it changed in the years following the first world war, especially since this particular example displays a mix of black and white, whereas we traditionally think of debutantes in all white. Instead, it was placed in a sterile, impersonal room, with little discussion of the cultural moment in which it was created.
The 1928 Reville Ltd dress, worn by Mary Francis Swire (Lady Holcroft); displayed as part of the “Dress Codes” exhibition at Kensington Palace.
A great example of how context can transform an object comes from a small, seemingly insignificant dress worn by a little girl and another worn by an adult woman, both for celebrations in 1953 to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. These dresses, so ordinary yet profoundly symbolic, showcase the shared experience of a nation celebrating its new monarch. The dresses aren’t just pieces of clothing; they represent the joy, the unity, and the collective optimism of post-war Britain. By placing these garments within the larger narrative of the coronation’s cultural significance, a connection is made between the personal and the political, showing how fashion reflected the spirit of an era.
A Palace of Possibility: The Exhibition that Could Have Been
In the following section, I’d like to paint a few imagined scenes — moments that might have brought back some of the theatrics and immersive storytelling seen in Crown to Couture, giving these extraordinary pieces the space, context, and grandeur they so clearly deserved.
Dressing the presence chamber
Here is what I would do with the 1928 couture court gown by Reville Ltd mentioned earlier. It’s a breathtaking piece in black and white, entirely covered in delicate beading, with a train and veil that speak to the ceremonial drama of court presentations. Rather than squeezing it in between other garments, robbing it of its theatrical potential, I’d have given it room to breathe. Placing it in the Presence Chamber, which was previously used as a stage for Beyoné’s Grammy dress, offers the perfect backdrop to evoke the scene of a court presentation. The throne beneath the grand canopy could have been flanked by garments worn by King George V and Queen Mary (or something that resembles the appropriate attire they would’ve worn to a court presentation), while the Reville gown stood at the foot of the stairs — its train cascading over the back and onto the floor, echoing the path a debutante would’ve walked.
The awkward embrace of tradition and trend
Beyond the Presence Chamber, other spaces within Kensington Palace were begging to be involved. The Cupola Room, with its musical clock and gilded grandeur, would’ve been the perfect setting to showcase ballgowns and court uniforms across the centuries.
Left: 1958 ballgown, believed to be worn by debutante Georgiana Grattan-Bellew to her coming-out ball. Both are currently on display at Kensington Palaces’ “Dress Codes” exhibition. Right: Ballgown believed to be worn to Queen Victoria’s Georgian costume ball in 1845, made from 1700s Spitalfields silk.
To add an even more dramatic touch: Display them on mannequins positioned as if frozen mid-dance, whirling through the ages.
Or the Queen’s Gallery, which could have brought attention to one of fashion history’s most bizarre (and rarely seen) intersections: When court dress codes clashed with changing fashion silhouettes. In the early 19th century, wide hoop skirts — still required by court — collided with the slim, empire-waisted silhouettes of the era.
Fashion plate of an early 19th-century British Court dress. Source: A lady in court dress, 1805. Pub. by Tabart & Co. June, 1805, Bond Str.
This awkward hybrid created some of the most fascinating fashion oddities, a visual clash born out of Queen Charlotte’s dislike of French fashion and rigid adherence to tradition. These are the kinds of stories that make court dress so compelling.
Cultural conversations left unspoken
To the exhibition’s credit, Dress Codes does gesture toward cultural diversity and exchange. One of the most compelling inclusions is Aziz Sheikh’s 2023 investiture outfit, introducing traditional Asian formalwear to British court ceremonies. His sherwani (traditional South Asian garment), featuring detailed embroidery, a high collar, and extended length, honours his Pakistani heritage. This showcases a beautiful symbol of how ceremonial dress is evolving to reflect a more inclusive society.
Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh’s investiture suite, worn in 2023, currently on display at Kensington Palace. Source: artsandculture.google.com
In a similar vein, the exhibition includes a Japanese court suit from the early 20th century, styled after European diplomatic uniforms but adorned with gold-embroidered paulownia flowers, a traditional symbol of the Japanese government. These garments — one showing Eastern elements entering British ceremonial attire, the other showing European influence on Japanese court dress — could’ve been placed in conversation with each other, offering a moment to explore reciprocal cultural exchange. Instead, they’re separated, disconnected, and lacking any interpretive context that might guide the viewer to such a reading.
Veiled in black, laden with meaning
Another code of dress hinted at in the exhibition, but which is left unexplored, is that of mourning attire. Two garments once worn by Queen Victoria — a black bodice and a full mourning gown, accompanied by her widow’s cap — appear briefly in the exhibition, with only passing mention of her lifetime of mourning after the death of Prince Albert. But these garments carry so much more than fabric and sentimentality; they tell the story of a queen in perpetual grief, whose personal sorrow reshaped the visual identity of her entire court, and arguably has left its mark on how we perceive the Victorian era in its entirety to this day.
Queen Victoria’s black mourning bodice, currently on display at Kensington Palace. Source: hrp.org.uk
This could have been a moment for the exhibition to slow down and examine the strict codes of Victorian mourning, how those rules extended to the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting in the very rooms where Queen Victoria was born and spent most of her childhood. One of her ladies wrote to her husband in exasperation:
I am in despair about my clothes, no sooner have I rigged myself out with good tweeds than we are plunged into the deepest mourning […] jet ornaments for six weeks!
Victor Mallet, Life with Queen Victoria; Marie Mallet’s Letters from Court, 1887-1901(1968)
It’s this kind of human detail that could’ve breathed life into the exhibition — and placed these garments within the emotional world of the people who wore them.
Evolving codes of ceremony
While the exhibition’s focus is rooted in history, it also gestures towards the evolution of dress codes, evidenced by the inclusion of more recent pieces worn by Princess Diana, Aziz Sheikh’s investiture suit, and Vivienne Westwood’s interpretation of formal dress.
That’s why the absence of pieces from more recent or current members of the royal family feels like a missed opportunity, or frankly, an essential omission. To truly decode dress, we must see how they function today. Contemporary ceremonial fashion remains a vehicle for diplomacy, symbolism, and soft power. Consider the carefully chosen colours and motifs that pay homage to host nations during overseas visits, or the sartorial nods to specific causes and events.
And of course, who could forget Queen Elizabeth II’s blue outfit, worn just after the Brexit referendum, with a matching hat adorned with yellow flowers? Whether coincidence or quiet political commentary, its resemblance to the EU flag set the press and public alight with interpretation. These moments prove that dress codes are not just historical relics; they’re living languages still being spoken.
Decoded? Not Quite. — Deflated? I’m Afraid So.
There’s no denying the joy of seeing these rare and remarkable garments up close. For lovers of fashion history, textile craft, and ceremonial grandeur, the pieces themselves absolutely warrant admiration. But for an exhibition with such a compelling premise, in a setting as iconic as Kensington Palace, the overall execution left me wanting more.
At £25 a ticket, the price of admission is steep, especially in a city overflowing with world-class museums and exhibitions that are entirely free to enter. To be clear, this ticket grants access to the palace as a whole, not just Decoding the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection. And of course, the majority of visitors are (international) tourists, here to take in the full experience. But for Historic Royal Palaces members — or for returning visitors like myself who no longer hold a membership and came specifically for the exhibition — the sense of underwhelm is hard to shake.
I also don’t want to overlook the behind-the-scenes realities of mounting an exhibition of this nature. Conserving delicate garments, some of which are centuries old, takes time, expertise, and considerable resources. It’s no small feat to prepare them for public display. I’m also aware that parts of Kensington Palace are currently undergoing restoration — a process that may have further limited what could be achieved with the available space and budget.
But even with all that in mind, I can’t help but feel that Dress Codes could have delivered a richer, more immersive experience. With even a few thoughtful shifts: Clearer storytelling, stronger visual staging, and more imaginative use of the palace’s architecture could have created a truly unforgettable exhibition. One that not only celebrated the garments on display but also honoured the complex histories, human stories, and evolving meanings embedded in ceremonial dress.
In a palace as rich in history as Kensington, storytelling is crucial. Fashion is never just about the clothes; it’s about what they represent and the stories they carry with them. Yet, Dress Codes fails to make these connections clear, offering a surface-level glance instead of a layered, multifaceted experience.
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