Caroline de Guitaut, Surveyor of The King’s Works of Art, during a private tour of Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style, April 22, 2026
Caroline de Guitaut carries the grand title “Surveyor of the King’s Works of Art.” With her appointment in 2023 by King Charles III, she is the first woman after nine men who have held the position starting in 1901. Her first task—the most challenging of her career since she joined the Royal Collection Trust in 1991—was to organize the biggest exhibition of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s fashion collection, choosing some 300 representative examples of clothing, jewelry and accessories from an archive of more than 4,000 items. De Guitaut faced a punishing deadline with instructions to organize the exhibition and write the 255-page lavishly illustrated catalogue to coincide with the centenary of the Queen’s birth on April 21, 1926.
Twelve days after the exhibition’s opening on April 10, The King’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace was mobbed when I arrived for my private tour with de Guitaut. The man taking tickets told us that 1,300 people had been visiting each day compared with 800 to 900 a day during the previous exhibit, The Edwardians: Age of Elegance, which ran from mid-April to late November 2025. Only days after my visit, the initial 17,000 copies of the exhibit’s catalogue, Queen Elizabeth II: Fashion and Style, had sold out, and another 20,000 were printed. Tickets to the exhibition’s scheduled run through October 18, 2026, were sold out around three weeks after the opening.
Three weeks later, on May 22, the Royal Collection Trust announced that the exhibit would be extended an additional six months until April 18, 2027. All told, 400,000 people will have seen this remarkable exhibition of the Queen’s fashion collection, making it the most visited show at The King’s Gallery. The previous most visited exhibition was Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing, which attracted just over 195,000 visitors in 2019.
“The incredible design of British couture”
The show begins with a dazzler, what de Guitaut described to me as “just a beautiful piece that sums up not just the incredible design in British couture, but also the craftsmanship.” It’s a gold lame and lace evening gown designed by Norman Hartnell that the Queen wore to New Zealand on her six-month Commonwealth tour after her coronation in 1953. As described in the catalogue, it has a “boned and corseted bodice and full gathered skirt, worn with a crinoline petticoat.” Overlaying the golden fabric is cream-colored lace embroidered with “stylized flowers and foliage” on silk tulle. A panel of that delicate fabric trails off the left shoulder down the back of the dress. It is significant not only for its radiant beauty, but because most of the outfits she wore on that tour have not survived.
The gold lame and lace evening gown by Norman Hartnell that Queen Elizabeth II wore in Wellington, New Zealand during her Commonwealth Tour of 1953-54
For my Royals Extra subscribers, I am sharing highlights of my hour-long tour with de Guitaut. I’ll describe the themes she explored, her goal of “myth busting,” and what she hopes visitors are learning about “the Queen’s relationship with fashion, which has been quite unrecognized and slightly sort of overlooked.” There are so many splendid pieces of clothing, along with hats, shoes, scarves, gloves, sketches and samples that I am spreading my impressions over two parts appearing on consecutive days. I want to convey the sublime as well as what King Charles described as “the quirky” when he and Camilla visited on the eve of his late mother’s birthday.
In the second installment tomorrow, I’ll reveal more favorite outfits and little-known stories about the Queen and fashion—among them her headscarves, her seldom-seen trousers, and her rare zipper. After the Palace announced the exhibition would be extended, I had a follow-up interview with de Guitaut. She offered an informed analysis of the show’s appeal, and I learned more about her background that gave her a special perspective.