3-078-066 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

At the Queen's Drawingroom, 1890. Debutantes (entitled young women) are presented to Queen Victoria. 'Owing to the extremely mild weather, the Queen's Drawingroom on March 11 was unusually well attended...The Princess of Wales was in brown velvet, trimmed with gold gauze and embroidery. She wore a splendid tiara of diamonds. Princess Beatrice was in yellow satin, and the two Princesses of Wales in pale-pink silk. The usually mournful dress of the Duchess of Albany was relieved by a skirt of white satin, richly embroidered. Over a hundred presentations were made to her Majesty...There were some blatant violet dresses worn - a peculiar bright aggressive shade, that needs the most brilliant of complexions to stand comfortably beside it. Of course, by the irony of the evil sprite that presides at many women's toilet-tables, the wearers were invariably distinguished for their muddy, colourless faces, which the violet mass of gown emphasised. A painful costume was of a blue-and-yellow striped silk, with panels and full sleeves of that terrible violet - it set one's teeth on edge with pain to see it. Another strange garment was black silk, printed with innumerable tiny yellow flowers'. Extract from the Ladies' Column, in the "Illustrated London News", 1890.