Tuesday 27 July 2010

RE: Kensington Palace's Enchanted Palace


right, so despite my kind lovely comments on my last Kensington palace post, I went ahead with the plan and on the 26th of July I trudged through London's liquid sunshine to the Enchanted Palace Exhibition. Obviously like any other London landmark, it had a very beautiful exterior, but there were hardcore building works taking place which detracted from it. Inside the palace some of it was cornered off for the enchanted palace and it was so surreal, it was like a more sophisticated tinkerbells house at Disney land. There was an anti camera policy but I took a few cheeky shots with my phone hence the pixelated low-res pictures. oh and also it has decided to not let me put more than one picture on here so a new post will have them on.
The purchase ticket room was illuminated with purple lighting and had these fake trees and branches all entwined with each other climbing the walls, from there the corridor that takes you to the exhibition was just painted white with drawing and messages on the walls in purple ink.
You were given a map that contained details about the rooms and some history, some rooms had a picture of a red crown by them which meant a name of a princess was hidden somewhere in there - by the end seven princesses should have been found. The reason I had originally wanted to go was that the palace had collaborated with artists and designers such as Vivienne Westwood, William Tempest, Stephen Jones, Boudicca, Aminaka Wilmont and Echo Morgan.
Vivienne Westwood was portraying ' a dress for a rebellious princess', it was brilliant it was a dress standing up on the staircase which was a reddish colour, it was the shape of a puffy princesses dress and had two badges on it! It was meant to be about princess Charlotte whom after she died left the country in mourning for over 20 years - so much so that they ran out of black cloth.
A couple of my other favourites were 'a dress of the world' by Echo Morgan, and 'a dress for dreaming of freedom' by William Tempest, this was meant to be about the young Princess Victoria - it was one of the most grand, draped from the ceiling with tiny origami birds flying off of it, however it was quite a busy room and someone was bound to have their eye on me if I took a picture, so sadly that will have to be imagined.
The final room was the room of dancing shadows which had one wall with illuminated pictures of the seven princesses, and the rest was dark with a projection of dancing people's silhouettes on the ceiling. It may not be everybody's cup of tea, but it was certainly mine - I would highly recommend it for anyone who is visual or is just interested in learning some of Great Britain's history. The exhibition goes on through august so there is still plenty of time left!


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