Enchanted Palace – the fashion installation project at Kensington Palace has London spellbound

In a 20-month project, London’s royal Kensington Palace has been transformed into an enchanted space where history is intertwined with all the magic of your favourite childhood fairytales.

Kensington Palace has been home to some of England’s most charismatic and best-known royals, including George II, Queen Victoria, Princess Margaret, and as you may remember from the photos of the sea of mourning bouquets; Diana, Princess of Wales.

The brand new spatial installation combines fashion, performance, art in a magnificent, and daring multi-sensory journey through the palace’s rooms.

Each room has been treated to a creative reinterpretation by leading contemporary fashion designers such as Vivienne Westwood, William Tempest, Stephen Jones, Boudicca, Aminaka Wilmont and illustrator/set designer Echo Morgan, who were all inspired by the seven princesses who once lived there - Mary, Anne, Caroline, Charlotte, Victoria, Margaret and Diana.

The project is in collaboration with the Wild Works international theatre company, who have ensured the spectacular aspects of the exhibition, including a permanent fleet of actors performing within the spaces, literally bringing the stories to life.

Enchanted Palace shows us that palaces were not just places of great decadence, aesthetic beauty, beginnings, love, happiness and riches, but also of great sadness, loss, departure, hate and jealousy.

The many different rooms reflect the vast range of experiences that unfolded within the palace walls; for example Princess Charlotte who died in childbirth is remembered by Vivienne Westwood.

And the room in which Princess Victoria woke to find she was Queen is revived by William Tempest’s dramatic dreamlike vision of her bedroom bathed in a blue twilight hour shade.

A birdcage sits in the centre of Queen Victoria’s childhood bedroom, the shadows of its bars projected in an abstract vision on the ceiling.

And indeed one is left with a great sense of feeling that despite their grandeur and beauty, palaces can also often be gilded cages.


Enchanted Palace
Kensington Palace, London
26 March 2010 - January 2012
Open daily 10:00 – 18:00