Inside the Royal Wardrobe - A Dress History of Queen Alexandra

Strasdin, Kate ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7617-9153 (2017) Inside the Royal Wardrobe - A Dress History of Queen Alexandra. Dress and Fashion Research . Bloomsbury Academic, London. ISBN 978-1350102347

Abstract / Summary

This single author monograph was undertaken following my doctoral research into the surviving garments of Queen Alexandra. Although earlier biographies had been written about this Edwardian Queen, her garments had never before been studied by scholars, despite the fact that her appearance was central to her public persona and the performance of her Imperial royal body. More than 130 garments survive in different museums worldwide, none of them had been studied before and some institutions did not know they had garments that related to her. The key research questions centred on demythologising previously long held notions of Alexandra's queenship, considering how objects can contribute to life writing and analysing elite dress practices in the 19th century. The research took a material culture methodological approach, starting with the object and then working in a cross-disciplinary fashion to better understand the life in question through the objects left behind. Garments were the primary source but underpinned with business records, wardrobe accounts, contemporary photographs and letters. The research produced some key outcomes in terms of new knowledge relating to Alexandra's life and aspects of her physical self that had never been interrogated before and brought together, in a virtual sense, the disparate objects form her working royal wardrobe that had become separated over more than a century and across four continents. It also underscored the practice of reading objects as sources and raising the profile of material culture studies in the academy. As well as the monograph which was published in both hardback and paperback and as an e-book, the research was disseminated through the exhibition, Royal Women, at the Fashion Museum, Bath. It was also shared with the institutions holding her garments, thus generating a connecting thread to link them, in spite of their disparate geographical locations.

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