Embroidered to Stardom: A Review of the 'Crown to Couture' Exhibition at Kensington Palace

Friday, May 26, 2023, months after anticipation of this exhibition, I was able to book my ticket and see the exhibition up close.

The exhibition garnered great hype for the items on view, most notably due to the inclusion of a variety of Met Gala outfits worn by the likes of Billie Eilish, Kendall Jenner, Billy Porter, and Anna Wintour.

First, I recommend booking in advance as the popularity of this exhibition is no small feat. Two lines formed. The left was reserved for ticket holders who arrived within more than 20 minutes before their allocated time slot. I had booked for 11:30 and arrived 5 minutes prior, so my line was to the right. The line for the exhibition was long, but the wait was much less, with a wait of 10-15 minutes. A staff member checks your ticket at the front of the line to confirm the time before you move on to the staff member who scans your ticket. Following that, you have your bag checked, then are free to roam into the exhibition. The ticket permits your entrance into both the temporary and permanent exhibitions at Kensington Palace.

Climb up the stairs on the right, and you reach the entrance toward the "Crown to Couture" Exhibition, but keep moving because the space is taut, and you're not quite there yet. Not to worry, the staff is calm and gentle with their reminders.

Keep walking straight, and you come across a makeshift red carpet walled with posters upon posters of drawn fashion models that extend toward the very end of the long hallway before your official entrance into the exhibition through the left door.

The exhibition was divided into the varying stages of an 'Event of the Season,' both in Georgian England and in the Twenty-first Century. The first thing you encounter is the dress Audrey Hepburn wore for her acceptance of the Best Actress award for her performance in Roman Holiday (1953) at the 1954 Oscars. Her dress stood beside a 17th Century court dress said to be one of the earliest examples of the beginnings of court attire introduced during the reign of Charles I or II. The themes of each room are hinted at through long baby pink scrolls accompanied by brief histories of the particular stage of an event. You are led onto following rooms through similarly sized pink scrolls titled "This Way" with a drawing of a Vogue/Fashion model in a gown pointing her finger toward the designated direction. Eventually, you come across more 18th Century garments displayed alongside modern-day garments worn by celebrities--a method for comparison.

One room offered a welcoming informal tone divided away from the usual comparisons between the old and new--it offered an insight into the process of creating Billy Porter's 2020 Met Gala Look. A single wall was decorated with sheets of paper detailing the outfit designs, inspirations, and fabric samplings used to create his "Sun God" costume.

What the exhibition does well is in its curatorial decisions. The amount of objects acquired is impressive. From Timothée Chalamet's suit from the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where he promoted the French Dispatch, to Beyoncé's Grammy's 2017 outfit or Blake Lively and Ryan Reynold's Met Gala outfits, even the Eighteenth-Century inspired Rococo dress that Kirstin Dunst wore to advertise her movie Marie Antoinette in 2006 for a Vogue Shoot.

The positioning of Beyoncé's dress in the queen's throne room was a witty move, just as the placement of Billy Porter's met gala outfit alongside Queen Charlotte's carriage. These tactics highlight the long-lasting cultural significance of varying objects that may have evolved visually but, at their core, retain similar values. In other words, what England has elevated as a 'Queen' based on a monarch from divine right is now used as a label for a legendary icon, a celebrity that doesn't even need that divine right or monarchic role. It could be a simple nod to the notion of celebrity that is accentuated by the use of a carriage based on the notion that the idol's feet must not touch the ground because of their superiority or godliness.

Additionally, the exhibition proved strong in its inclusion of the male court regime as well as it is too often shielded by the somehow more elaborate customs of the woman.

The design choices are, however, hit or miss.

The exhibition lacked sufficient lighting in various rooms, especially when it came to the object labels. The lighting was a bit of a distraction when it came to the object labels. There were certain rooms completely covered in the dark as the curtains were drawn. The outfits were lit up with centralized lighting that seemed to illuminate only the front of the dress, or they were too cool in tone--contrasting the warmth of the red carpets. Focalized LED ceiling lights would have also proved beneficial.

It is understandable that the overall theme of the exhibition calls for traditional representations of stardom, and that calls for the implementation of red carpets. However, if the exhibition was restricted to the existing color of the walls considering this is royal property, the color of the carpets could have been adapted to match the wall colorings.

This particular exhibit of accessories worn by both the Georgian court and modern-day celebrities surely, helped that both boxes were accompanied by numbered labels and silhouettes of each object to make it easier to note which items were which. Perhaps the objects were combined to evoke the timelessness of the accessories' grandeur and design. However, their combination was confusing and risked crowd-management counterproductivity. The labels were small and abundant--that though a worthy addition to the exhibition, only rendered them more infused--the message so saturated that viewers were not as keen to pay as great of attention towards the objects.

There was another room I had entered following the grand hall of celebrity attire from the likes of Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Timothée Chalamet, Lady Gaga, Ryan Reynolds, and Blake Lively. It was small and made up primarily of portraits of a few notable figures of the Eighteenth-Century. There were times when I found the particular display of images useless or not as impactful. Its intention seemed to be the analysis of what society deems as a worthy celebrity with a supposedly interactive screen that switched between the Clooneys among many other modern-day celebrities. If the message was this comparison of what the court or society deemed a worthy celebrity, the room could have benefited from lists of stars that were invited to the Met Gala or existing portraits, photographic or oil-based, of these figures as a representation of the worthy elite--then and now. Screens showcasing clips from the GlamBot, a slow-motion camera that has been used on the Oscars red carpet for the past few years that seem to dominate social media--an updated, technological version of the selective oil-paint portrait would have, thus, been beneficial to the room.

Overall, the exhibition was worth it, especially for its vast of never-before-seen up-close celebrity outfits and ability to roam through the other parts of the palace, such as the Victoria: A Royal Childhood exhibition and Jewel Room in the ticket purchase. The exhibition runs until the 29th of October this year, so book your tickets while you can. Ticket prices aren't exorbitantly priced, with palace members permitted free entry and adults from the ages of 18-64 going for £25.40, or if you had a national art pass (which I had), you gain entry for £12.70.

To purchase the tickets, here is a link to the site: https://www.hrp.org.uk/kensington-palace/whats-on/crown-to-couture/#gs.zi8qvu

Safe to say, I was indubitably starstruck.