Our journey through the wardrobe archives of the late Queen Elizabeth II brings us today to 1983, and boy do we have an excellent ’80s look to enjoy, from the Queen’s state dinner in California that March.
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip headed to America’s west coast for a state visit in 1983, touring cities throughout California in February and March. The royal couple made stops in San Diego, Palm Springs, Los Angeles, and even visited Yosemite National Park, heading north toward the conclusion of their visit in Seattle. (The Brits had hoped for sunny, warm weather and were disappointed to find cool, damp days in California.) On March 3, the royals were the guests of honor at a state dinner hosted by the Reagans at San Francisco’s M.H. de Young Memorial Museum.
The guest list for the dinner was star-studded and varied: quarterback Joe Montana, actresses Mary Martin and Shirley Temple Black, Masterpiece Theatre host Alastair Cooke, baseball greats Willie Mays and Joe DiMaggio, Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, and Star Wars director George Lucas. All watched as the Queen delivered remarks from the dais, perching a pair of reading glasses on the end of her nose. She drew loud laughter from the President when she quipped, “I knew before we came that we have exported many of our traditions to the United States. I had not realized before that weather was one of them.”
In contrast to Nancy Reagan’s emerald green Galanos gown, the Queen wore champagne-colored taffeta and chiffon. The San Francisco Examiner reported that the dress was a “gossamer gown” of “antique ivory silk with [a] fitted bodice and ruffled sleeve and shoulder detailing.” They reported that one guest sighed, “A fairy princess gown.”
The dress, and indeed the Queen’s entire wardrobe for the trip, drew mixed reviews from California fashionistas. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “In an age of chichi and glitz, in places where formal dress can mean creases in one’s jeans, the Queen in California was Eleanor Roosevelt on a Bob Mackie runway.”
With the gown, the Queen piled on pieces of jewelry designed to dazzle her hosts. She wore one of the most regal tiaras in her collection: the Vladimir Tiara, made for the Romanovs in the nineteenth century and acquired in the twentieth by her grandmother, Queen Mary. She opted for the pearl setting of the tiara, making it a natural fit with her antique pearl and diamond earrings, which belonged to one of King George III’s daughters.
Elizabeth also wore an impressive necklace of diamonds and pearls that belonged to her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. The jewel was a gift from a committee of aristocratic women to commemorate Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in the spring of 1887. She loved the piece so much that she designated it as an Heirloom to the Crown, designed to pass from monarch to monarch for the use of the Queen of the United Kingdom.
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