The Emperor's New Clothes by Victoria Alexander

Although the gowns and hats are separated by time, they are united through their bold floral motifs that are startling in their botanical naturalism. 1748), the venue for 'The English Garden,' teems with figures wearing eighteenth-century gowns made from Spitalfields silks and sporting twenty-first century hats by Philip Treacy. In the book, images of the Kirtlington Park Dining Room (ca. As this book reveals, they can be found in the novels of Samuel Richardson and in the paintings of George Stubbs and William Hogarth.ĪngloMania presents historical costumes with clothing of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in a series of theatrical vignettes staged in the Museum's English Period Rooms. These narratives are, however, not merely the product of European-American Anglophilia but are fostered by the English themselves.

Englishness is a romantic construct, formed by fictive and imaginary narratives.

Through the lens of fashion, AngloMania, based on the popular exhibition of the same name held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006, examines aspects of English culture that continue to capture the imaginations of Europeans and Americans, among them the class system, sport, royalty, pageantry, eccentricity, the gentleman, and the country garden. Yet what began as an intellectual phenomenon became and has remained, a matter of style. Continental Anglophiles such as Voltaire and Montesquieu saw England as a land of reason, freedom, and tolerance. 'At that point in the dream, she would wake up.Anglomania gripped Europe during the mid-to-late eighteenth century. It is an eerie and troubling image that could so easily have been a metaphor for the tragedy that lay ahead. Instead of remaining there, it would slip down her face and come to a halt over her neck, before slowly tightening around her throat and choking her. ‘No,’ she told me, ‘but I have had nightmares about it.’ These bad dreams had a recurring image: it was the pivotal moment in the Coronation and the crown was being lowered onto her head.

'I asked her once if she dreamt about being crowned. In his column for the Daily Mail newspaper, he wrote: 'In all the years I knew Diana, she rarely spoke about being Queen, possibly because everyone else was always speculating about it. The late royal was in line to become queen when she was married to King Charles while he was Prince of Wales before their divorce in 1996 ended her chances of being crowned - but her confidant Richard has now revealed Diana was terrified of ever having to take part in the historic ritual. Diana, Princess of Wales had nightmares about the coronationĭiana, Princess of Wales suffered frightening nightmares about the coronation, according to her longtime friend Richard Kay.

The Emperor's New Clothes by Victoria Alexander