A Royal Wardrobe Unlocked: Queen Alexandra 1863 – 1910 is the timely topic of this year’s FREE lecture by Kate Strasdin
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is pleased to present the 20th Annual Veronika Gervers Memorial Lecture, taking place on Friday, November 11 from 5:30 to 6:30pm.
Delivered by Kate Strasdin, this year’s topic follows the recent triumphant visit to Canada of Prince William and his fashionably engaging wife, Kate Middleton, the new Duchess of Cambridge. Before Kate and her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana, Queen Alexandra was the royal family’s style icon.
Born in 1844, Alexandra married Edward VII at age 19. Heavily involved in various charitable endeavours, especially those helping the poor and veterans of England’s wars, Alexandra is widely looked upon as the most beautiful of all Queens of England. She died in 1925.
The Textiles & Costume section in the ROM’s World Cultures department holds the third largest collection of Queen Alexandra’s clothing in the world. The Museum’s holdings include significant evening garments from her earliest years as Princess of Wales to the more stately examples she wore as Queen. These objects offer a sparkling snapshot into the world and wardrobe of one of the most famous women of the nineteenth century.
Kate Strasdin completed her MA in History of Textiles and Dress at the Textile Conservation Centre in Winchester. She is in the final stages of her PhD analysing the surviving garments of Queen Alexandra. Currently, she teaches History and Theory of Dress at University College, Falmouth in Cornwall, and is assistant curator with the Devonshire Collection of Period Dress, Totnes.
The lecture takes place in the Signy & Cléophée Eaton Theatre on the Museum’s Level 1B. Attendees should enter via the President’s Choice School Entrance, located at the Museum’s south end. The event is open to the public and is free of charge.
This event is presented by the Veronika Gervers Research Fellowship. The Research Fellowship is supported by a memorial fund established in 1979 to commemorate the noted ROM curator and textile scholar, Veronika Gervers, to promote scholarly research that incorporates the ROM’s textile and costume collections. The Fellowship is open to PhD candidates and international scholars whose research can make direct use of, or support, any part of the Museum’s collections. Successful Gervers candidates are selected by a committee of both museum and university scholars. Senior Curator Dr. Alexandra Palmer, of the ROM’s Textiles & Costume department, and herself a former Gervers Fellow, chairs the committee.