At Chatsworth House, a Tale of Five Centuries
Last year, Gucci shot its 2017 cruise collection at Chatsworth,
and the house clearly made its mark on the creative director Alessandro Michele, who said it was "unlike anywhere else in the world, full of charm and rituals." "You can see history everywhere," Mr. Michele said, "yet everything is alive." The most recent Gucci runway collection was packed with what Lady Burlington termed "Chatsworth detail," including fabrics, colors and bejeweled bugs and bees crawling over suiting and shirts.
Burlington said that We met many years ago on an ill-fated fashion shoot for Harper’s and Queen,
To create this exhibit on the landscape of Chatsworth, where so many legendary lives and moments have unfolded, has just been extraordinary." Lady Burlington, a former model and fashion buyer, said
that her first meeting with Mr. Bowles was less than auspicious.
The exhibition is organized by theme, including Coronation Dress; Bess of Hardwick
and the Tudor Influence; the Georgiana Effect; and Country Living and Entertaining at Chatsworth, though a standout moment for him may be a reimagining of the Devonshire House Ball, situated in the grandest staterooms in the house.
Given the calligraphy offerings on the Milan runway last month, Mr. Michele may also have been taken with the 11th duke’s trove of novelty slogan pullovers, printed with phrases like "Get Up
and Do Something," "Far Better Not" "All Passion Spent" and "Never Marry a Mitford." The duke’s wife, Debo Mitford (one of six Mitford sisters who dominated British high society in the 1930s), died in 2014, but she is represented in the exhibition.
Considered one of the great treasure houses of England, set amid the rolling green hills of the Derbyshire Dales, the estate has played host over the last 500 years to some of Britain’s most captivating
and infamous women, including: Bess of Hardwick; Mary, Queen of Scots; Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire; Kathleen Kennedy, known as Kick (sister to John F. Kennedy); and Deborah Mitford, known as Debo.
