Young Alix - Before her Marriage

[CountessKate]

But would there have been a reason for Alix to have her hair up earlier? I am 99% certain her hair is in a braided bun!

This photo is also dated 1887 (September, at Balmoral):

and Alix seems to have her hair up, and long skirts.  While 16 was the usual age for putting the hair up and lengthening the skirts, it could happen earlier if a girl's height developed and her figure matured to the extent that she would look 'improper' to Victorian eyes in the short skirts and with the loose hair of girlhood.  From this photo it certainly seems as if Alix was as tall as Irene, who would have been 21, and taller than her aunt Beatrice, her figure was well developed, and it may well have seemed appropriate by her grandmother and sisters for her to have the appearance of a young woman.

[Alixz]

As you can see Prince Eddy is also in the picture.  This may have been the beginning of the Queen's matchmaking plans for Alix and Eddy.  In that case, Alix would have needed to be presented as a more mature young woman.

[Kalafrana]

Alixz

Good point, especially as Eddy was no schoolboy but eight years older than she was.

Ann

[CountessKate]

This may have been the beginning of the Queen's matchmaking plans for Alix and Eddy.  In that case, Alix would have needed to be presented as a more mature young woman.

I don't think Queen Victoria would have sought to give Alix a more womanly appearance because of Eddy - she was very unkeen on early, overt matchmaking where a girl was presented to the world at too young an age or paraded in front of young men (she was disparaging of her daughter Vicky's attempts to find a parti for Mossy which she thought were too obvious and inappropriate).  However, I do agree that Alix's more mature appearance (and given her age, I think it is unlikely that she would have had her hair up and skirts down any earlier) and Eddy's presence at Balmoral at the same time might have popped the idea into her head.  I haven't seen anything which suggests she especially promoted the Alix-Eddy idea before Eddy took the notion into his own head in 1889 - although she might have ensured there were opportunities for the cousins to come across one another from time to time - but not in any obvious way. 

[grandduchessella]

I'm sorry I keep bombarding this thread with questions, but this picture in The Romanovs: Love Power and Tragedy set me thinking.

It's dated as 1887, when Alix was fifteen, and yet her hair appears to be up. I have also seen other photographs of her that are dated as being before her sixteenth birthday, and yet her hair is in a bun. Could it be that they are misdated: perhaps this one is 1888? Ella is there, after all--could be taken during the visit Ella and Serge made to Hesse for Alix's coming-out? (One other set of photos, which I thought to have been taken in 1884 in Russia, shows Alix looking more like seventeen than twelve--perhaps these are in fact from the 1889 visit?) But would there have been a reason for Alix to have her hair up earlier? I am 99% certain her hair is in a braided bun!

It's not Ella but rather Irene who is there. In other versions of the photo (scattered around the Forum, there are about 4-5 sittings) there you can see a servant holding Princess Patricia of Connaught who was born in March 1886 and is still an infant in the photos.

[Kalafrana]

'I don't think Queen Victoria would have sought to give Alix a more womanly appearance because of Eddy - she was very unkeen on early, overt matchmaking where a girl was presented to the world at too young an age or paraded in front of young men (she was disparaging of her daughter Vicky's attempts to find a parti for Mossy which she thought were too obvious and inappropriate).'

Had Queen Victoria changed her mind about early matchmaking? She had been happy to arrange Victoria's marriage with Friedrich of Prussia when she was 14!

Ann

[CountessKate]

'I don't think Queen Victoria would have sought to give Alix a more womanly appearance because of Eddy - she was very unkeen on early, overt matchmaking where a girl was presented to the world at too young an age or paraded in front of young men (she was disparaging of her daughter Vicky's attempts to find a parti for Mossy which she thought were too obvious and inappropriate).'

Had Queen Victoria changed her mind about early matchmaking? She had been happy to arrange Victoria's marriage with Friedrich of Prussia when she was 14!
Ann

She repeatedly said to Vicky that her early engagement had been a mistake - at least in terms of allowing her to be engaged at such a young age, not the relationship itself.  She demonstrated a number of contradictory attitudes to marriage post-Albert, and particularly with regard to the Hesse-Darmstadt family she had strong possessive feelings which clashed with the great interest she took in matchmaking generally.  But essentially while she tended to have a great many technical discussions, with Vicky in particular, e.g. x might be suitable for y, she did not appear to do more than hint, or at least see how things might progress when two potential parties were in the same grouping under her auspices, but did not throw them together too obviously.  There were some of her grandchildrens' marriages in which dynastic considerations caused her to exert strong pressure.  Eddie and Alix; Victoria Melita and Ernest; and Mary Teck and George of York (after Eddie's death).  Otherwise, although she had strong views, there is little evidence that she actually encouraged or pushed relationships or marriages in her extensive family though she continued to take a deep interest in the subject.

[Alixz]

I didn't think that Alix was being presented as older and more mature for Eddy's opinion, but perhaps for the opinion of the public and the rest of the family if that particular match came about.

[GrandDuchessAndrea]

Does anybody know who designed Alix's coming-out/debut dress? Or any other info about it? I know it was white, and poufy, and had an off-the-shoulder, slightly V neck, with lilies of the valley...well, anybody can see that in the pictures! But was there a designer who would come up with the styles of the Hesse girls dresses? Of course they would not have been bought from a store, and likely not made from Godey's Ladies Book patterns either, (or whatever the German equivalent of that American magazine was.)

[CountessKate]

I've never read anything about the dress itself but think it very unlikely that for the simple style of a young girl's coming-out dress, that a designer as such would have been used - at least in the sense of a top-notch known couturier.  The dress would indeed not have been off the peg, but the style could easily have been modelled on gowns produced for her sisters or the huge female cousinage, and it was very common at the time for women with new designer dresses to let their female family and friends (and more importantly, their family/friends' maids) take a look at the latest fashions for their own dressmakers to copy or adopt.  However, Germany wasn't deficient in dressmakers who knew the latest styles - in 'Dearest Missy', the correspondence of Marie of Edinburgh and her daughter Marie of Romania, there are frequent references to a 'Mme Menier' in Coburg who seemed au fait with the latest Paris fashions and from whom Marie of Romania was ordering clothes after her marriage (along with Paris gowns!).  There were plenty of magazines and illustrations of designer dresses from houses such as Worth which local dressmakers could reference, and if something a bit more sophisticated was wanted, Frankfurt was pretty close to Darmstadt and the dressmakers there could certainly supply a suitable gown.  So it could have been a purely local production, with the style having input from the more fashionable family members, or it could have been from one of the larger German fashion centres (though this was unlikely to have been Berlin).

[Helen]

Broadcasting company "Hessischer Rundfunk" will broadcast a documentary/film on Alix as a Hessian princess in a week or two.
It will include an interview with Ms. Lotte Hoffmann-Kuhnt, who edited and published Alix's letters to her friend Toni Becker-Bracht.
According to Ms. Hoffmann-Kuhnt, it will be broadcast on 6 January 2015 ( 20h15 local time)  and again on 10 January 2015 ( 18h30 local time).
To watch it, go to http://www.hr-online.de/website/fernsehen/sendungen/ and click on the 'Livestream' button.

[THERRY]

[wakas]

Beautiful picture.

[Ally Kumari]

This was labeled as Ella but to me it looks more like Alix



could it be from any of the fancy balls in Darmstadt? Or is it really Ella?

[Svetabel]

This was labeled as Ella but to me it looks more like Alix



could it be from any of the fancy balls in Darmstadt? Or is it really Ella?

That's Alix, her features are unmistakeable there.