Imperial Style and Alexandra's Clothing from 1880 to 1917

[griffh]

And finally this is Alix at sixteen in 1888.  You can see that she is in fashion but still wearing her school girl attire which has a definitely dated look.  If you look at the way her bodice is cut, with it's pointed end and how her high collar opens to an undercollar, it is very similar  to the fashion illustration on the right from 1884.  Obviously Alix is still an adolescent so one would not expect her to be dressing at the height of fashion and too her father's resources are limited.  Comparing her with Ella in the same era, one can really appreciate the difference between a 16 year old German Princess and her sister as a 28 year old Russian Grand Duchess.  Also I wanted to say that Queen Alexandra is looking amazingly young as she is in her mid 40's in the photo.  Griff

[griffh]

I really don't know why the pictures turned out to be so big.  I will try to make them smaller and modify my post.  The next style I will try to docuement is the early 1890's.  I just saw the pictures of Anna Vyruvoba's albums on the Yale site and I was up all night thinking.  There are three pictures of her sometime around 1916 that are hardly recognizable and are so tragically haunting.  I think that Anna caught the stunned grief and bewildered terror that Alix must have felt after Rasputin was assassinated.  Her face looks like the face of Russia went it was torn and tortured by Stalin.  The pictures are different from the ones taken in Spala in 1912 where she looks spiritually and physically drained and defeated.  In these pictures in 1916 she looks lost and alone.   Oddly enough I still find great beauty in them.  The thing about Alix is that she is totally exposed, her most intimate thoughts, her weaknesses, her strengths, her most private affairs as a woman, her greatest moments of beauty, her most tragic moments of dissolutionment and defeat and still she stands as a woman of heroic proportions in spite of her mistakes and this is perhaps because of the fact that she was never acting a part but was genuinely being herself and striving to live up to her highest concept of what was right.    

[griffh]

Well the first of my bookcases arrived today, the corner sections so I imagine, hopefully by the end of July or the beginning of August I should have my books back home with me.  

Speedycat I am insanely jealous of your fabulous new book on Maud's gowns so we are tied.  But I will try to post my fashion library.  It is mostly paperback Dover publications which I love and some Met. Mus stuff and some other fashion histories that are out of print.  

And thank you for the kind remarks about my observations of Alix.  I met to add that there is the most haunting picture of her where she appears like a ghost image behind a chair where one of her children is sitting.  I will try to post that one.  

Aleksandra I am glad that I am able to keep my promise about a study and comparison of Alix's hats and hair styles.  

 

[griffh]

Here is the surreal picture of Alix I was talking about.  I also posted it on Alexandra's ghost thread.  Griff

[Speedycat]

.....................

Speedycat I am insanely jealous of your fabulous new book on Maud's gowns so we are tied.  But I will try to post my fashion library.  It is mostly paperback Dover publications which I love and some Met. Mus stuff and some other fashion histories that are out of print...........  


  

Yes, the Maud book is great.  It really doesn't have any photos of her, but excellent color photos of her collection of clothing.  I am stunned that a women in her late 60's was still so stylish...slim waist, figure hugging fashions of the 1930s,so many sleeveless gowns, everything at the cutting edge of the style of the day.  I have a few of the Dover publications and some Sears, Gimbels etc catalog reprints from the late 19th/early 20th Century.  I am really wanting to get the "Wish Book" series that are out-of-print that have patterns to reproduce preiod clothes for dolls.

[Harrie]

Hello,
I would like to know if anyone has a reference for the story posted by Griffith on February 27 about an encounter between the Kaiser and Princess Montesquiou at a ball where the Kaiser comments on a priceless flounce of Venetian lace which the princess was wearing and then the princess remarks that Queen Margherita had a similar flounce which had disintigrated when applied to a gown.
I know that this is a web site about Alexandra, but if anyone could pass on the reference to Margherita I would be most grateful.
With kind regards,
Angharad

[isabel]

My question is about children clothes. Had Alix dressmakers in Palace?? where the children clothes were done?.

Queen Alexandra of England, use to said that she loved to see Alix children, because they were always so well dressed¡¡. I am agree.

I think that Alix was very elegant,... how she blend clothes, hats, shoes ¡¡¡ We can see her elegance in the way she dressed her children. The summer dresses, the baptizes dresses of her babys....explendid¡

My favorites are the sailors suits for the four girls.

Really she had style.

[strom]

Dear Griffth:
I think the photo you posted is not of Empress Alexandra and Alexis but of GD. Tatiana and Alexis.    

[Sarushka]

Strom --

You're right, it's Tatiana and Alexei in the chair. But there's also a ghost-like image of Alix hoovering over them, probably caused by a double exposure.  

[griffh]

Dear Harrie,

Please forgive the long delay in answering your question.  The quote is from H.H. Princess Montesquiou Montluc Siena's autobiography, "There's Rosemary," Hutcheinson & Sons, London, 1933, p. 76.