Exhibition - The Edwardians: Age of Elegance
Beneath the chandeliers of The King’s Gallery, a world of silk, satin, and sovereign splendour unfurls like a theatre curtain on a golden age. The Edwardians: Age of Elegance is an intoxicating immersion into the refined excesses and curated fantasies of a royal court poised between the twilight of empire and the dawn of modernity. Here, glamour reigns supreme, each object a testament to a time when taste was power, and style a sovereign language all its own.
The Family of Queen Victoria in 1887, Laurits Regner Tuxen.
This breathtaking show begins in 1887, within the painted hush of Laurits Tuxen’s royal group portrait, and draws the visitor into the orbit of Britain’s most fashionable sovereigns: Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, followed by their successors, George V and Queen Mary. Spanning from Edward and Alexandra’s 1863 wedding to the solemn dusk of the First World War, the exhibition captures a society poised delicately between grandeur and the gathering storm of modernity.
Sir Samuel Luke Fildes, Queen Alexandra, 1905.
But it is the clothes - those luscious signifiers of status and style - that steal the show for us here at Selvedge. And not just the garments on display, but their likenesses offered in exquisite painterly style. Queen Alexandra emerges as the era’s undisputed style icon, her silhouette as finely sculpted as the couture she favoured. Her coronation gown, resplendent in Parisian gold gauze and encrusted with diamanté to catch the flicker of electric light, hangs like a constellation made tangible. A tiny-waisted vision in velvet and pearls, Alexandra knew how to harness drama: from the Tudor revivalism of her Mary Queen of Scots costume to the delicate chokers that drew the eye to her famed swan-like neck.
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, photographed by Nadar in 1888. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust.
Edward’s world was stitched with just as much extravagance - top hats and frock coats, plump cravats, velvet capes and gleaming orders. His image, captured by Nadar, smoulders with theatrical charisma: a monarch equal parts indulgence and discretion, cigar smoke curling through social seasons and costume balls.
The wardrobes of this age reveal a society of curated personas, where dressing was performance and every feather fan or silken train a flourish in an ongoing royal pageant. The Marlborough House set, ever-draped in dark silks and translucent chiffons as immortalised by John Singer Sargent, played out their fantasies in Waverley-inspired masquerades and Jubilee fêtes. Fashion was not just aesthetic - it was myth-making.
The Marriage of George, Duke of York, with Princess Mary of Teck, 6 July 1893, 1894, Laurits Regner Tuxen.
More than 300 objects from the Royal Collection bring this decadent epoch to life: glittering tiaras float like stardust, while portraiture glows with candlelit poise. Yet beneath the surface shimmer, an elegy unfolds. As the First World War casts its long shadow, the silks give way to service uniforms, the soirées to sorrow.
Still, The Edwardians remains a love letter to splendour in an era where even the trappings of power were worn with extraordinary panache.
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Further Information:
The Edwardians: Age of Elegance is on now until 23 November 2025 at The King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London.
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Image Credits:
LEAD: Charles Baugniet, After the Ball: A Lady in a Ballgown Asleep on a Sofa, c.1860–67.
All other images as credited in captions.