Tartan dress
1835-37RCIN 71984
Both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert championed the wearing of tartan, both in their own clothes and in the clothing of their children. George IV’s state visit to Scotland in 1822, during which he stayed here at Holyroodhouse, was one of several events which brought tartan and Highland dress into the sphere of the fashionable world. Silk velvets of this type, woven to imitate tartan, were popular in both England and France during the period 1825 – 1840.
A remarkably similar fabric is depicted in Queen Victoria’s own pencil and watercolour sketch of her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, painted in December 1859.