6 Tips on How to Dress for Royal Occasions, from Royal History to Now

Heading to a Buckingham Palace garden party, an investiture at Windsor Castle or a state dinner alongside royals and want to know what to wear?

The curator of a new exhibition at the former home of Princess Diana has some of the answers.

Using some of the outfits from the show opening on March 13 at Kensington Palace, Historic Royal Palaces curator Matthew Storey gives pointers to PEOPLE on how history and convention — and some written rules — have governed how to dress royally.

Storey says he and his team had been looking for an imaginative way of showcasing some of the 10,000 items the charity Historic Royal Palaces looks after, so they settled on the theme of dress codes. While the rules could seem “quite obscure, they’re actually related to something we can all understand, because we all get dressed every morning,” Storey tells PEOPLE. “We all think about the clothes we are going to wear, the messages we send with them.”

“We often dress up to mark certain moments in our lives,” he says. “And that struck me as a theme everybody could relate to and also to express who we are, what stage of life we are at.”

So they’ve brought together a selection of clothes worn by royals, and others, to show how conventions and rules have evolved. Fittingly, as she lived there with her sons Prince William and Prince Harry, there are three gowns made famous by Diana, including a green silk velvet tuxedo-style dress by Catherine Walker. There are some, too, from another Kensington Palace resident Princess Margaret, the late Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister, who died in 2002. (Another highlight is a pair of floral dresses by Liberty which the two young princesses wore in 1936.)

Here are some of Storey’s pointers:

Getting it right for the culture and setting

Princess Diana’s scarlet silk and embroidered Bruce Oldfield gown she wore in private in Saudi Arabia in 1987 “shows how beautifully  Diana understood the rules of royal dressing,” Storey says.

Official visits overseas are one of the most important activities that members of the royal family undertake, Storey says. The full-length dress “is beautifully embellished, so it’s absolutely perfect for evening wear.”

“You have to think about practical things like weather and climate and the kind of activities you’re going to be doing. All of that is planned in advance, but also you have to think about the country’s culture. So it’s a form of diplomacy through dress as well,” he adds.

“She had to show respect to Middle Eastern culture. And that’s where you have the high neckline and the long sleeves as well,” he continues. “So it’s modest as well.”

“Coming from being a teenager growing up in the country who was not very interested in clothes, Diana enters public life when she becomes a member of the royal family, and she works with the best of British design to dress for her new life,” Storey says. “This shows how perfectly she does that.”

Conforming to rules at Investitures — with a twist.

For her day dress when she was made a Dame in 2006 at the palace, designer Vivienne Westwood made some bold additions to the written code. “She’s conforming to the code on the invitation of wearing the day dress. But she does it in her own way,” Storey says. “She’d have known the historic rules of court dressing, which included having a train attached to the shoulder and she makes that nod to history with a train attached to the shoulder.”

“But she does it in her own way as well. So the design of the dress has that deconstructed punk look. She also wears this incredible hat on the back of her head, which has an AR on it, which is referring to her Active Resistance to propaganda campaign. And she also intended it to recall a Che Guevara hat.”

“So she’s going to the palace referencing a communist revolutionary Che Guevara with badge, which she’s referring to her campaign.”

“So she’s sending her political message when she’s doing that, and also she’s been fabulously subversive as well because she wore it with a tiara, which has two little devil horns on her temples.”

Following the written rules

A court dress from Reville was worn by Annie Lady Holcroft in 1928 when she was presented at court in the same way as a debutante. That custom was “normally associated with younger women stepping into adult life and society for the first time. But Annie Lady Holcroft was about 59 or 60 when she wore this dress,” Storey explains.

Lady Holcroft went through the ceremony because she wanted to present her daughter at court – and that could only be done by someone who had been presented too.

By now, clothing worn by the elites at court had “become regulated and codified,” Storey says. “This shows the jump between the 18th century and what occurred in the 19th century to get you to the early 20th century. She would have to wear clothing that conformed to written regulations and those regulations could have been seen in a book published by the Lord Chamberlain’s office called Dress Worn At Court.”

So the rules she — and her daughter — followed was evening dress, with a train which had to be attached to the shoulders and her hair a veil on which she included the “three ostrich feathers in a Prince of Wales plume.” She had to wear gloves and choose to carry a bouquet of flowers or a fan — she picked the latter. It would all be checked too.

“She could not have gained admission to that if her clothing hadn’t conformed to both regulations,” Storey adds.

Gaining entry via wealth shown in clothes

The court suit from the 18^th century is the oldest piece in the exhibition and is from a time before any written rules about specific codes. Polite, royal society was governed by conventions.

“Wearing the correct clothing gets you through the door and then you get all of those networking opportunities to meet the right people, to see and be seen, and to, if you are lucky, access to the king and get the king’s ear,” Storey says.

“It sounds egalitarian as if anyone could wear the correct clothes and go in. But in fact the correct clothes were so expensive that it’s not egalitarian at all. Only the people who could afford to dress correctly and have the knowledge to dress correctly.”

This suit is made from ivory silk, which was brocaded with silver metallic thread and completed with tiny ivory, pink, green and black “rosebud” spots. There were also thin blue floss silk brocaded bands. The fancy cuffs were decorated with three buttons and cream silk net sleeve ruffles.

This “beautifully embroidered, cutaway coat is the correct style, but it’s about the correct level of expense as well,” Storey says. “It’s literally got silver thread, real silver woven through the fabrics. So effectively you are wearing money when you are wearing this. And then with metallic embroidery.”

“It’s about showing your wealth and position in society to gain access.”

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Fitting in at royal celebrations

Storey and his team didn’t want the show to be just about members of the royal family or their servants. So he introduced something from members of the public. “Everybody can use clothes to take part, or feel part of a royal occasion,” he says.

They picked a young girl’s frock from Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 was decorated in red, white and blue with some of the scenes from the much-anticipated coronation in central London.

“The coronation was an optimistic moment coming after the Second World War and the years of rationing and austerity that existed alongside it. Now, a young queen was coming to the throne,” Storey says. “It’s got a lovely little freeze along the skirt showing the coronation procession, the Queen on the throne, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace.”

The dress showed what it was like if you “dress up for maybe like a street party or something like that to be feel part of this great royal event,” he adds. “The patriotic imagery and red, white and blue are the codes there.”

Mourning dress can continue for years after a death

Queen Alexandra’s chiffon and lace dress from Claire Collins was worn at Royal Ascot race meeting in 1911 or 1912.

“In the codes of 19th and the early 20th-century warning, you had different stages of mourning dress,” Storey says. In the immediate aftermath of a bereavement, it would be black. Some, like Queen Victoria, might choose to continue with that for the rest of her life.

“But you could also move into half-mourning, and that’s where you wear whites and mauves and grays. Or you could go back to wearing normal clothes in any color,” Storey says.

Queen Alexandra, who lost her son Prince Albert Victor in 1892, wore these half-mourning colors of white, mauve gray and black for the rest of her life (though she did wear gold at her 1902 coronation). “These muted colors are what she tends to go for from 1892 onwards to show her emotion and devastation after loss of her son,” says Storey.

Tickets for the Dress Code exhibition at Kensington Palace, from March 13 to November 30, 2025, are available here.