The surroundings are not in the least magical; the building is utilitarian and anonymous, in a small complex of workshops and warehouses. The contents, however, are remarkable: on my way to the textile studio, I pass a restorer at work on a red satin-covered chair that looks very much like the one I saw The Queen sitting on when I encountered her, more than a decade ago, in the Crimson Drawing Room of the nearby castle. There is a treasure trove of royal clothes, too, forming as compelling a historical collection as the annals contained within the Round Tower. Like a handwritten letter or diary that survives long after the death of its author, these corporeal garments are testaments to a past life. The Amies dresses that I am here to see today are stored in grey boxes, like coffins, to keep them safe from daylight, fluctuations in temperature, and the fatal depredations of clothes moths (whose larvae spin tunnels of silk and feed off the materials that they inhabits and eventually destroy). The conservator and one of her colleagues open the first box, removing the layers of tissue paper that shroud the garment, and then they don special gloves to lift it onto a display table. It is a strapless red velvet evening gown, with a tiny waist – only 23 inches – and identified by the curators as having been worn by Princess Elizabeth in the late 1940s. Hardy Amies opened his couture house in January 1946. This gown appears to be strikingly similar in style to Christian Dior’s debut New Look collection, launched in February 1947, which introduced long, extravagantly full skirts, in marked contrast to wartime rationing and austerity. A small yet distinctive label – consisting of Amies’s own handwritten signature and address (14 Savile Row) – is neatly stitched inside a seam within the black satin lining, hidden by the folds of the floor-length skirt. The crimson is an undeniably regal colour, but this is a party dress for a princess to dance in, rather than stand to attention in her formal regalia. The velvet feels soft to the touch, almost warm in its intimacy, as if it has only just been shrugged off by Lilibet, the laughing girl who wore it in her youth.
