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THBHRH DUKE OF WINDSOR ROTHESAY HUNTING TARTAN SUIT ORIGINALLY TAILORED FOR HIS FATHER, KING GEORGE V
About Seller
9665 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 150
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
United States
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- Lot Description
A two-piece Rothesay Hunting Tartan lounge suit in forest green, deep red, and pale yellow, from the wardrobe of the Duke Of Windsor and originally made for King George V. The wool suit consists of a single-breasted jacket with shawl collar, fabric-covered buttons, and a pair of flat-front trousers with zipper fly. As noted by Sotheby’s in its 1997 catalog, alterations that coincide with the Duke of Windsor’s comments relating to the Rothesay Hunting Tartan suit in A Family Album are present and include the collar that originally buttoned higher to a Late Victorian style, the jacket has been relined with deep green satin rayon, and a zipper fly has replaced the original button fly in the trousers. No labels or tailor’s markings present. Together with a white cotton shirt bearing a piqué bib monogrammed with a W and crown, three silk Hawes & Curtis bow ties, and a Hawes & Curtis deep green silk cummerbund.
The 1997 Sotheby’s catalog and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute, referenced autobiographies from both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor when discussing this suit. In The Heart Has Its Reasons, the Duchess of Windsor wrote:
For some time after our marriage I was puzzled by the fact that while he was the acknowledged leader of men’s fashion, he rarely bought a new suit. … Take, for instance, that tartan dinner suit His Royal Highness wore last night at dinner. According to the tailor’s marks on the inside pocket, it was made for his father in 1897. Now, I am happy to see the suit still looking so well, after being refitted to His Royal Highness. (Simpson, 307)
In A Family Album, the Duke of Windsor wrote:
Few of my father’s clothes were any use to me after his death. … I did, however, take one of his Inverness capes, and a Rothesay Hunting Tartan suit, which he used to wear for tea after shooting. I had it altered to fit me, substituting zip flies, which would have horrified my father for the buttons. It still contains in the pocket a tab bearing my father’s name-H.R.H. The Duke of York, and the date 1897. (Sotheby’s, 404)
In the exhibit cataloging for “Blithe Spirit: The Windsor Set,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art further quotes A Family Album while describing how the suit inspired a 1950s craze for tartan:
I happened to wear it one evening for a dinner at La Croë near Antibes, where the Duchess and I lived for a while after the last war. One of our guests mentioned the fact to a friend in the men’s fashion trade, who immediately cabled the news to America. Within a few months tartan had become a popular material for every sort of masculine garment, from dinner jackets and cummerbunds to swimming trunks and beach shorts. Later the craze extended to luggage. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 19)
PROVENANCE Lot 2913, “The Duke & Duchess of Windsor: The Private Collections,” Sotheby’s, New York, Sale number 7000, September 11-19, 1997
LITERATURE
A Family Album, by Duke of Windsor (London: Cassell & Company, 1960)
Blithe Spirit: The Windsor Set, by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute (New York, 2002)
Artist Rebel Dandy: Men of Fashion, by Kate Irvin and Laurie Anne Brewer (Yale University and Rhode Island School of Design, 2013), p.3
The Heart has its reasons: the Memoirs of the Duchess of Windsor, by Wallis Simpson (New York: Van Rees Press, 1956), p.307
Sotheby’s, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor: The Private Collections, (Sotheby’s, 1997), p. 404EXHIBITED “Blithe Spirit: The Windsor Set” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, 2002–2003
“Artist, Rebel, Dandy: Men of Fashion” at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, April 26 –August 18, 2013 - Shipping Info
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