A Stitch in Time

Following the Stuart Restoration, Charles II had to craft a public image that reinforced him as the rightful head of the nation, while avoiding the extravagant displays that made his father unpopular. Amber Butchart journeys from an English stately home to the Palace of Versailles to understand the monarch credited with creating the three-piece suit.

Van Eyck’s enigmatic Arnolfini portrait offers rich material for debating its meaning. Does the female subject’s voluminous gown indicate that she was pregnant? Amber travels around the country to see the garment’s fabric evolve from raw wool to the finest cloth, and discovers how wool was dyed in the 1400s, using natural ingredients from botanical and bodily sources.

At Broughton Castle, Amber examines a full-size portrait of an 18th-century hedge cutter, a rare example of a worker being immortalized on canvas. Although no one knows who the subject is, or even who painted it, one thing that is certain is that the man’s patched-up leather coat reveals much about the clothing of ordinary working people of the period.

In Scotland’s Scone Palace hangs a portrait of Lady Elizabeth Murray and a black woman mistakenly thought to be her servant, but who was in fact her cousin, Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate daughter of a naval captain and a slave. The archives at Kenwood House provide clues to Dido’s life, while an 18th-century cotton mill reveals much about the impact of slavery on the fashion of the day.

Six centuries ago, the eldest son of King Edward III-the so-called Black Prince-decreed that on his death, his heraldic surcoat (or jupon) was to be displayed above his effigy in Canterbury Cathedral. Amber Butchart is allowed a once-in-a-lifetime close encounter with this extremely fragile and historically significant garment.

Amber Butchart goes in search of the doomed queen through a scandalous portrait, La Reine en Gaulle which reveals not only Marie-Antoinette's lack of political judgment but also her desire to be released from the formality of court life. Ninya Mikhaila and her team labour to recreate the scandalous gown.