Much has been written over the years about movie costumes and how in some cases costume designers actually try to recreate historical dresses and yet in most cases, no matter how beautiful and tight look like the dress for the era, once you dig deeper, you realize that, in fact, it was not historically accurate. So instead of talking about movie dresses, we thought today we would tell you about some pretty incredible historical dresses that have actually been made for very rich people and worn by them on special occasions. Many of these dresses are still kept in museums to be preserved as works of art.
1. The peacock dress
This dress was made for Mary Curzon, Baroness Kedleston, to wear at the coronation celebration of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. It was personally designed by Jean-Philippe Worth for Baroness Curzon. The dress was made of chiffon fabric that was then embellished with gold and silver threads, and when we say gold we mean the metal, not just a gold-colored thread. It was then shipped to Paris, France, where it was designed into a two-piece dress consisting of a bodice and a skirt. A long train ending in chiffon roses was also added in Paris and the dress was then sent back to India. The overall effect was incredible. Gold and silver threads were hand-stitched in a pattern that resembles peacock feathers and those green, gem-like “eyes” are actually made from beetle wings. This dress is now kept in a museum in a display case to help control the temperature and humidity around it and prevent it from being ruined. Since the metallic thread of the dress makes it not only heavy (it weighs 4.5 kg) but also very susceptible to damage.
2. Sisi’s dress
This beautiful dress was made for Empress Elizabeth of Austria, whose nickname was Sisi. It was made by Charles Frederick Worth. If you look closely, you’ll notice that it looks incredibly similar, we’d even go so far as to say it’s almost identical to the one Emmy Rossum wore in The Phantom of the Opera. This dress can be seen in a museum in Vienna. They had a whole exhibition on Sisi’s Corfu Haute Couture, so named because she owned a palace on Corfu, a Greek island, and loved dressing up in quite spectacular dresses.
3. Marie Antoinette Camisole
Marie Antoinette was such a fashionista that everything she considered fashionable had the power to make or break a fashion trend and influence the fashion industry not only in France but throughout Europe. Many of her beautiful, intricate dresses with skirts as wide as they were long have been immortalized in paintings, but it is her simple cotton dress that became known as “chemise a la reine” that caused the biggest stir because it not only resembled underwear. of the time, but it was also made of cotton, which is a very long chain of events that caused a slavery boom to produce more cotton to support the new fashionable cotton dresses.
4. Coronation dress of Maria Alexandrovna
Maria Alexandrovna, also known as Maria of Hasse, was the wife of the Russian Emperor Alexander II. This dress was made in St. Petersburg specifically for the coronation. Maria was 32 years old at the time of the event and had already been married to Alexander II for 16 years. The dress was made to resemble the European dresses in fashion at the time with some Russian elements to keep it up to the occasion. It is decorated with silver embroidery and has been kept in the Kremlin for years as a work of art. But not only is it impressive enough to be preserved in a museum, it also inspired the curtains of the Mariinsky theater in St. Petersburg, which is actually named after the empress herself.
5. Queen Elizabeth II coronation dress
Queen Elizabeth II is a very elegant lady, you can still see it to this day when she wears her color coordinated outfits for all the special occasions and ceremonies she attends. But her coronation dress is definitely one of the most stunning dresses she has ever worn. It was designed by Norman Hartnell and actually took 8 months of hard work to create. A lot of thought and effort was put into it. The Queen wanted her dress to be satin, just like her wedding dress. It also includes embroidery elements representing all the countries of the United Kingdom and the nations of the Commonwealth. Thus we have the English rose, an Irish shamrock, the Scottish thistle, the Welsh leek, a maple leaf for Canada, an acacia for Australia, etc. In fact, the Queen even wore it several times after the coronation, for the opening of parliaments in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ceylon.
