This stunning costume is a reproduction of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation gown, which Norman Hartnell designed in 1952/1953. Though Hartnell went through several designs, the final version featured gold, silver, and pearl embroidered flowers representing each of the countries and territories of the Commonwealth. There were Tudor roses for England, Scottish thistles, Irish shamrocks, Canadian maple leaves, silver ferns of New Zealand, Australian wattle flowers, South African protea, lotus flowers of India, lotus flowers of Ceylon, as well as wheat, oats, and fronds to represent Pakistan.
In 2012, for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations, Swarovski hired Angels Costumes to re-create the gown for a window display at the London department store Harrods. When Recycled Movie Costumes interviewed Jeremy with Angels Costumes in 2016, we asked him what his favorite costume in the collection was. He stated that the Coronation reproduction gown was one of his favorites and mentioned some additional details, as well as the fact that we would soon see it again:
One costume that I always love seeing is actually not a famous film costume. It is a recreation of the Queen’s Coronation dress that we made for Harrods. It is just simply stunning. There are over 4000 hand-attached beads on this dress. We never thought it would be hired out again, as it was made as close to the original as possible, and we never thought anyone would have the same size and shape as the queen. But a current production has hired it to use, as they have the queen’s coronation in their series, and the actress playing the queen fitted into the dress perfectly!
As it turns out, the new production Jeremy was speaking of was the 2016 Netflix series The Crown. The actress in question was Claire Foy, who portrays Queen Elizabeth II.
You can learn more about the actual Coronation gown here. If you would also like to read more about the Angels reproduction gown and the work that went into it, it is beautifully documented in the Angels Costumes book Behind the Seams. Netflix also has a lovely featurette about the costumes for the series, which includes information about the rented Coronation gown, which you can view here.
What do you think of this reproduction gown? Let us know!
Costume Commentary
Love this!
Thank you! I am working on a big write up, which I will post here later. I suspected when my Angels interviewer told me her favorite piece was the Cornation gown, and that “a production” had rented it out recently – I went digging and figured it HAD to be this production.
Nice write up.
Thanks! I thought this piece was really neat! I really do need to get write ups on every page, honestly…If I wasn’t working 80 hours a week I could do so much more! Someday! Good news is I plan to keep this site up forever and ever and ever, so it’ll get done eventually.