Fashion Historian. @Stanford grad. Tweets at @WornOnThisDay. Words at @TheAtlantic @WSJ @OrnamentMag @washingtonpost. Repped by @laurieannfox. Now on Bluesky!
Once again, Queen Charlotte's throne room is played by the Double Cube Room at Wilton House, with Anthony van Dyck's 1635 portrait of the 4th Earl of Pembroke and his family, his biggest canvas. The Tate has a fascinating look at the work's messy dynamics: tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue…
Pei is the only designer whose clothes I can look at and have NO idea what I’m looking at: 
HELLO, JARETH. 
That is QUEEN VICTORIA. Specifically, her coronation portrait by Sir George Hayter. Her coronation was in 1838, 20 years after Charlotte DIED. 
A few people have sent me this lewk and I'm going to do a 🧵, because it's something I've researched and written about extensively and because it shows how even well-intentioned, well-budgeted historical costuming can go off the rails when you don't HIRE👏FASHION👏HISTORIANS👏. 
The poodle skirt as we know it—a circle skirt decorated with poodles and other kitschy appliqués—was a novelty worn by grown women for 2 years AT MOST, roughly 1952-54, before being consigned the children’s department and thence to the dustbin of history. 
Fortuny was inspired by this Hellenistic sculpture of a charioteer dug up at Delphi in 1896, the same year the modern Olympic Games began in Athens. The life-sized bronze wears a long, pleated tunic called a chiton, belted above the waist, with thin straps crossing the shoulders. 
“In later years, especially as the women’s movement took hold in the ‘70s, people began to ask me about my costume,” Nichols remembered in her autobiography. “Some thought it ‘demeaning’ for a woman in the command crew to be dressed so sexily.” 
