![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Palace bruited that the dress had been paid for with ration coupons just as though it were going to belong to a grocer's daughter from Bognor Regis, but the end result, kept secret until the moment of its unveiling, was a thing of staggering luxury.Ĭonsidering that this wedding gown debuted over 70 years ago, there's something faintly surreal about the fact the young princess who wore it still sits on the throne: Queen Elizabeth's reign has grown so long that its beginnings are now the province of historical fiction. Conceived by some of the same canny old courtiers who'd successfully navigated the monarchy through the tangles of Abdication, the wedding gown was intended to be a very pragmatic real-world demonstration of the inspirational power of a fairy tale. The gown, a fountain ivory silk shimmering with 10,000 seed pearls, was the creation of Court Designer Norman Hartnell, the pinnacle of his craft, an utterly arresting bolt of sunlight meant to pierce the gloom of a postwar Britain frozen by unprecedented cold and ground down with rationing. The sumptuous dress Princess Elizabeth wore at her wedding to Philipp Mountbatten in 1947 was as much a national symbol as it was a sartorial triumph, and as such it was carefully stage-managed from start to finish. ![]()
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