Monday Memory: June 29, 2017
Today’s Monday Memory draws us back to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2017. Kate was the guest of honor at the museum on June 29th to open the Exhibition Road entrance wearing a Gucci grosgrain-trimmed tweed mini dress.
This was a new dress and a new label to her closet. Although, Kate had carried accessories from Gucci (red clutch from 2011), this was the first dress we saw on her from the label.
Looking back in my archives, I see that I shared the following background:
According to that tome of knowledge that is The Wikipedia, Exhibition Road is named for the Great Exhibition of 1851 (I knew about that) and the road is lined with museums. Apparently, the area is known as Albertopolis, after Victoria's husband who was a real promoter of the arts, but the drama comes in because the V&A hasn't had a really accessible entrance onto Exhibition Road. Kate was at the V&A today to open a brand new entrance and courtyard, and new galleries that cost the museum a cool £50million+.
I also shared in 2017:
I did a number of quick Google searches and apparently there was quite a dispute about the design, which doesn't exactly fit the museum's classic style, but we will leave that for another day. The point is, Kate came to open this new entrance expanding the V&A's accessibility and its gallery space.
I will say today what I didn’t say then: this is atrociously ugly. I would have been with the crowd advocating for a more traditional design. But to each their own.
A fun element of Kate’s style that day was that she almost certainly briefed and maybe even coordinated her ensemble with the V&A. The museum tweeted at the time:
The Duchess of Cambridge’s elegance tells a compelling story of British style, blending international designers along great British labels.The V&A holds the national collection of fashion, one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of dress in the world. The [@]Gucci dress worn today by the Duchess of Cambridge demonstrates the continuing influence of 1960s style on contemporary fashion. This dress by André Courrèges epitomises the clean lines & straight cut of the period, in display in Gallery 40.
The museum also shared they had added Kate’s L.K. Bennett Sledge heels to their shoe exhibition, thanks to Kate’s faithful promotion of the pumps over the early years of her time as a royal.
Kate paired the dress with a new Emmy London clutch and her L.K. Bennett “Art” heels, first worn in Lancashire in 2011.
She completed the look with her Annoushka Baroque pearl drops. I love these earrings.
Obviously this is a deliberately retro look that becomes, in some sense, timeless. I think Kate could still pull this off today. If she ever recycled this look, it would be fun to pair it with cute flats and an updo for a change of pace. What do you think?
I love this dress on Kate, and I think your suggestion, Jane, of a recycle with flats and an updo would be lovely as well. Is the print black or navy? Either looks fantastic, and Kate looks beautifully healthy in these photos. I do hope her treatments are going well and we will see a return to these types of engagements on her calendar.
What a fabulous and timeless look. I can see a dress like that being worn by Princess Anne in the late 60s, and I could see this same dress being worn by Charlotte in 15 years.