The Clothes that Make the Queen (with Kate Strasdin)

How does a queen show her power through her clothing? In her book DRESSING THE QUEEN, historian Kate Strasdin traces two hundred years of the most important garments that a royal can wear. Support Noble Blood: —ORDER 'THE ARCANE ARTS' https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/771398/the-arcane-arts-by-s-d-coverly/ — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/noblebloodtales — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250840578/anatomyalovestory' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250861016/immortalityalovestory' See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:00Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. If you know Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum, you know he's one of the most delightful people on television. He's also a serious history nerd. He has a new fun history podcast called What the Fact, co-hosted with Carter Roy from Conspiracy Theories and Murder: True Crime Stories. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from across history and tell you the story behind them. Carter sets the scene, and Connor brings the deep cuts, the hilarious tangents, and his infectious love of history.

• 0:42Dana Schwartz?

  From the worst years to be alive, to the women so powerful they started wars, Connor and Carter will take you all over the timeline. Every episode will leave you in a better mood and a little smarter. The wildest stuff is real, and the real stuff is way wilder than you think. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact on your favorite podcast app, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

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• 2:58Dana Schwartz?

  Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Listener discretion advised.

• 3:10Dana Schwartz?

  I'm so happy to be here today for a very special episode of Noble Blood. I'm joined by Dr. Kate Strasdin, who's the author of the new Dressing the Queen: 200 Years of Craft, Couture, and Monarchy. I found this book so fascinating, because I can't imagine a historian taking more time to go into more depth, to find the stories of the people that are so often forgotten, the people who actually craft these garments that are seen by millions, billions of people around the world and throughout history. Dr. Strasdin, thank you for joining me.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Oh, my pleasure. It's great to be here. You know, I love talking about these people, so it's a treat.

• 3:50Dana Schwartz?

  So what inspired this book? What made you want to dive into the actual process and stories behind these garments?

• 3:58Speaker 03

  So I did my PhD a long time ago now, back in, back in the sort of mid 2000s, and was working as a part-time curator of dress and textiles. And the collection that I was working with, we were actually given a collection of objects from a maker called John Redfern. And I had never heard of this maker, and it just, they were such spectacular objects. They were these kind of Edwardian gowns. So the more I looked into his origins as a maker, a name kept cropping up, and it was Alexandra, Princess of Wales, who was Queen Victoria's daughter-in-law. So I ended up seeing these incredible photographs of her as a woman that was really renowned for her style and her, her appearance and

• 4:42Speaker 03

  how she used dress very strategically. And that became the subject of my PhD, her kind of approach to dress. But in doing that PhD, I think what I realized more than anything was that the kinds of things I was encountering, as well as exploring her life through dress, it became as much as anything about the makers who supplied her wardrobe, and the dressers and the laundromates, and all of the people who were far less well-known, are often invisible. And that kind of really sparked my interest.

• 5:15Dana Schwartz?

  That's wonderful. Before we get into those stories, I just want to ask you, in your opinion, on a macro level, what is the importance of what a queen or a monarch wears?

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Well, it's soft power. I mean, certainly in terms of the British monarchy, you're looking at a monarchy that doesn't have any actual teeth in terms of power. It doesn't have political power, or it doesn't have that kind of value. But it kind of carries such a lot of weight in terms of its historical associations, and then the impact that what monarchs and their consorts wear. It makes a massive difference. And you only have to look back centuries to see that sartorial power is not to be dismissed lightly. You know, it carries great weight. And I think as a dress historian, I've always been subject to all the many times that people have said, oh, well, dress and textiles, you know, they

• 6:11Speaker 03

  don't really matter. They're kind of ephemeral and superficial. And I think this is a great example of not only it being about the power of the wearer, but also the labor and the economic power that supported that. And so, yeah, I think it does mean that we retain this kind of interest in what these people have worn, as the first celebrities, I guess.

• 6:34Dana Schwartz?

  Before my lifetime, I, I can identify certain dresses that, say, Princess Diana wore, even when I wasn't conscious of clothes, just because they've lasted in this way.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:47Dana Schwartz?

  I know specific items that she wore, even though I wasn't aware at the time.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly that. You know, she was somebody that, like many of her predecessors, recognized that often when she didn't necessarily have a, certainly a political voice, or even a public voice that was easily expressed, she could use dress really successfully to convey all sorts of things. And that really matters, you know. And I think it's something that we all do, although this is about high-status dress, and it might be about garments that are perhaps inaccessible to us in terms of their, their worth or their value. But in fact, it's what we all do every day in our self-presentation, and the, the way we navigate the world with how we're embodied, and, and the way we do that through dress.

• 7:32Dana Schwartz?

  That's very well said. One chapter of this book I was fascinated by was by the regalia, the royal robes that a monarch might only wear ceremonially at a, at a coronation or something. Can you walk us through what would go into making the sort of royal robe that a monarch might wear?

• 7:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it's a good example of a garment that's really visible at a public level. I think, you know, you see postcards of kings and queens wearing these extraordinarily anachronistic kind of robes. They don't, they don't have any other function in any other walk of life. They're made from velvet, and then they are usually trimmed with fur, and they have different embroidered sections on them. So they have these kind of constituent parts. The first job is to weave the velvet. And when I was undertaking the research into that, I, I had no idea how complex weaving silk velvet is. And it just kind of blew my mind.

• 8:31Dana Schwartz?

  I was shocked by how many threads and how much effort goes into velvet. Can you tell us a bit about that process?

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Yes. So whereas plain weaving, as you will know, you have, you have your warp and your weft, you're weaving the weft back and forth. And, you know, that's, we can kind of understand that process. But with a velvet loom, you have to create, the surface of velvet being that soft nap, the pile of velvet, is created by having, I mean, tens of thousands of fine silk threads, which are then woven with a, a very, very tiny wire going through as it's being woven. So it creates a loop. And this wire is like two millimeters thick. And so when the loop has been created, that means that the, that loop can then be cut, and that's what creates the nap, the soft weave of the velvet. But

• 9:22Speaker 03

  that's done on a scale of, I mean, it took the very experienced silk weavers at the factory at Warner's in Braintree in the 19, early 1950s. It took them, well, they were able to weave six yards in a very, very long period of time. You know, it just took them forever to do, you know, so many inches per day in order to create the, what would become the really long robe. And that's before it even becomes embroidered. It's, it's like a whole other thing.

• 9:54Dana Schwartz?

  I found it extraordinary, because a velvet robe is something a child might imagine a king wearing. But I don't think we attach it to how luxurious it truly is to have all of these skilled laborers making this garment by hand.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Yes. And it's those various processes, because once you've made the velvet, then you have to source the embroidery, and that gets embroidered by any number of incredibly skilled workers in spaces like the Ladies' Work Society or the Royal School of Needlework. And they, they are commissioned to create the embroideries. But then the whole of it has to be made up into a wearable robe by robe makers like Eden Ravenscroft. And there you have a, a different skill set to do with the tailoring. So, yeah, it comprises just a whole set of skills and people who often remain nameless. There were many moments where I was mind-blown by this.

• 10:50Dana Schwartz?

  One anecdote I found was very charming was that the young woman who was Queen Elizabeth II's body double for fittings, because of course, the queen isn't going to stand there for hours while a garment is being fitted.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  No.

• 11:05Dana Schwartz?

  But it's very interesting to me, the queen obviously cannot just go to a mall to buy a dress. You can't go to a department store. So how does a queen's wardrobe come together?

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Well, very often, it starts with building strong relationships with the makers. And this is something that through things like the royal warrant of appointment, where you have people that have made objects for the royal wardrobe for a long time, and then they are granted the royal warrant, which gives them a kind of access in terms of what they're making. They're seen as a very reliable, kind of trusted maker.

• 11:41Dana Schwartz?

  And it's a public mark on the outside of the door. Sorry to interrupt. So everyone can see this is a place where the royals shop.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It's the coat of arms that says you've got the royal warrant. And of course, for makers, it's a big part of their marketing and publicity and things like that.

• 12:00Dana Schwartz?

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  The way it works often is that in building up these trusted relationships, makers from these establishments will have patterns. So dressmakers, for example, would have a dress form for the queen, whichever queen it might have been. They would have a set of draft patterns that they can work to. And then often what happens is that the maker and the fitter, or the designer and the fitter, would travel to one of the royal residences to liaise with the queen, whether it was Queen Victoria, or Queen Alexandra, or Queen Elizabeth, and have these conversations about the garments that they were bringing to be fitted. And often, it's a very fluid interaction in that the queen will make her suggestions.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  She'll say what she likes, what she doesn't like. The designer and the fitter will make their observations, and then it will go back and forth. So you don't, you very rarely have that kind of, what we would see as a more normal kind of retail opportunity where you go into the premises and you, you know, not that many of us are buying couture, but yes, it happens that the makers tend to travel to the royal residences themselves.

• 13:06Dana Schwartz?

  And then is the queen sort of selecting what gowns she wants to build a wardrobe?

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And often, they will annotate both Queen Alexandra and Queen Elizabeth, just as examples, would make very clear annotations on sketches about the things that they thought needed changing, whether they thought that there needed to be a different color, or whether they wanted to try a different trim. So they would have a very active role in participating in the construction of that wardrobe. And I think that's because they understood, as well as anybody, what their public appearances meant, and how what they wore made a difference to, certainly it coincides with a much more active press and all of

• 13:54Speaker 03

  those kinds of things that meant that they would come under scrutiny. And so that became a big part of how they functioned.

• 14:02Dana Schwartz?

  I think someone like Queen Elizabeth II isn't known as a fashion plate. I don't think many people hold her up as a fashion inspiration, but she did spend a lot of time and consideration, as you mentioned, thinking about what she was going to wear. How do you sort of reconcile that?

• 14:21Speaker 03

  I think it goes right back to, well, certainly, Queen Victoria was mindful of the fact that to appear too fashionable, you opened yourself up to charges of flippancy and changing with trends. You know, you're meant to appear as this figure that is consistent and stable. And so giving into the kind of vagaries of swift trend changes, that was something that certainly the British monarchy felt that it had to remove itself from slightly. And by the early 20th century, royal women were widely regarded as kind of being preserved in aspic, in a way, you know, they might have a certain kind of style, but they certainly wouldn't have necessarily been considered fashionable.

• 15:03Dana Schwartz?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  But so what they developed was, in a sense, a uniform. And I think you could look at Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth for sure, and say that although she went through different kind of periods of style, if you like, in different decades, it certainly evolved into a uniform that worked for the way that her kind of public calendar worked. And she often said about having to be seen to be believed, because she was short in stature, the color and the hats and everything came into play in order to present this kind of vision that everybody came to expect.

• 15:40Dana Schwartz?

  I'm glad you brought up the hats, because I'm American. I don't think hats are part of the culture in America the same way they are in the UK. But you, of course, mentioned how much work goes into crafting hats. For people who don't quite understand the culture of hats that are handmade couture, can you explain sort of how that goes into a royal wardrobe?

• 16:02Speaker 03

  Well, hats are really interesting, because they're another sign of time stopping, really. Because certainly, up until the 1950s in the UK, everybody wore hats. And then in the 60s, they fell out of fashion, but royalty continued to wear them and have done so ever since. So the kind of art of the milliner is another one of those where it feels like you are, not only are you dealing with the raw materials of something like the straw in the 19th century, which had to be plaited, and that was a whole other industry, of women and young girls plaiting straw for the very fine braided hats that were made. In the 20th century, you have a whole host of incredible makers working

• 16:43Speaker 03

  in studios around, often around the southeast, but certainly in London for the big makers. And you have the steaming, you know, you have the hat blocks, you have the steaming, you have the creation of the silk flowers, you have just this whole plethora of different stages and different skills that go into the creation of those hats.

• 17:05Dana Schwartz?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  There are some amazing, anybody that would like to have a look, have a look at British Pathé, which is the website for old newsreel footage. And you can find some amazing videos of these kind of 1950s workshops. They're a lot of fun to watch.

• 17:21Dana Schwartz?

  These hats really are works of art. They're their own sculptures.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  They are sculptures. I had great conversation. I think one of the things I enjoyed about this book that was that it had the historical research, which I love anyway, but also it was, there were opportunities to talk to more recent makers. And so one of the people that I really enjoyed talking to was Stella McLaren, who was the queen's kind of milliner in residence, if you like. She had her millinery workshop above the queen's bedroom in Buckingham Palace, and told me about how she would be working on a hat for a particular upcoming event. And she would just trot down the stairs, the queen would be having a cup of tea in bed, and she would plonk the hat on her head, check that it was fitting, and then she'd go back up to her workshop. You know, she really missed the queen. She wasn't able

• 18:10Speaker 03

  to carry on with her millinery after the queen died. And so that was a kind of period of her life that she really loved.

• 18:18Dana Schwartz?

  Now, in the last probably 50, 60 years, especially with modernization, factories, fast fashion, really, what has happened to this culture? Because it's not as if these people just learn their trades by themselves. There are these larger cultures where people are, for lack of a better word, interns and apprentices, learning these trades in these big structures. What happens when there's not a market for these handmade, beautiful objects?

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Well, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head there in terms of, I think, you know, we might look at something like the monarchy and think that it is anachronistic and that it doesn't serve a valuable purpose anymore. And yeah, there's an argument for its extravagance. But if you look at the kind of numbers that are still employed in creating these things, which are so rarefied and so specialized, I think that is a great argument for the maintenance of it. I think because people are starting to feel more aware of really bad textile and dress practices, like fast fashion and waste and overconsumption, I think there's a growing interest in maintaining skill sets. So in the UK, for example, we

• 19:31Speaker 03

  have an organization called Heritage Craft Association, which looks at preserving endangered skills and finding ways to encourage people to learn about them or even learn to do them. And they have all sorts of initiatives. And there is a broader, globally, there is the Intangible Cultural Heritage Organization that looks at preserving these kind of skills as well.

• 20:02Dana Schwartz?

  If you know Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum, you know he's one of the most delightful people on television. He's also a serious history nerd. He has a new fun history podcast called What the Fact, co-hosted with Carter Roy from Conspiracy Theories and Murder True Crime Stories. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from across history and tell you the story behind them. Carter sets the scene and Connor brings the deep cuts, the hilarious tangents and his infectious love of history. From the worst years to be alive to the women so powerful they started wars,

• 20:45Dana Schwartz?

  Connor and Carter will take you all over the timeline. Every episode will leave you in a better mood and a little smarter. The wildest stuff is real and the real stuff is way wilder than you think. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact on your favorite podcast app or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod. You know, all those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again? You know, the sweater that works with every outfit you try on and the jeans that you know will always fit you just right? Or the bag you carry everywhere? Those are the exact pieces that earn a place in your wardrobe. And that's exactly what Quince does so well.

• 21:30Dana Schwartz?

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• 22:13Dana Schwartz?

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• 22:56Dana Schwartz?

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• 23:08Speaker 04

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Ledger. How does music actually enter your mind?

• 23:30Speaker 05

  I'm not sure why or how the music comes to me, but I think people who love music and write music, our brains are just filled with music.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  Like, we have listened to so much music. We've been a part of so much music. I think of the story that I want to tell, the mood that I want to create with the music, start playing chords, see where they lead me.

• 23:52Speaker 04

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• 24:16Dana Schwartz?

  I'm also curious for the next generation of royals, Queen Camilla, but also Princess Catherine. Are you noticing a change in how they're approaching dress?

• 24:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, interestingly, only a few months ago, the Princess of Wales, Catherine, announced that she would no longer be offering details of what she's wearing for her public events. And I think that's quite a significant announcement. In some ways, I get it. It's the rationale for that. She wanted her roles to be at the forefront of what's being discussed rather than what she's wearing. But I also think traditionally, the way that that information was disseminated often did give a space for some of these smaller makers to get some attention. When her daughter Princess Charlotte wore, I think as a toddler, some little smocked dresses. They were very traditionally British with the smocking, the floral dresses. And it was a small British maker.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  You know, her business kind of took off on the back of that recognition. So I think it's a shame if it goes altogether because I think people are genuinely interested.

• 25:20Dana Schwartz?

  I also think there's such a power to highlighting designers in a way that very few people can. I think people identify when she wears a British or English designer. I remember maybe the closest equivalent we have in America is I still remember how Michelle Obama, at her first inauguration, wore this gown by Jason Wu, who was a name that wasn't familiar to many of us, but then of course became nationally famous for an instant. For longer than an instant, we still know.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. I think that's true and I think that's ever been the case. I mean, that's basically what happened with Alexandra and John Redfern. He was just a draper on the Isle of Wight and his star kind of rose. He had then branches in New York and his whole kind of career took off the back of the way it was reported in the press that he was clothing the Princess of Wales. And so I think there's great value in recognizing that work and those skills.

• 26:15Dana Schwartz?

  So I have a very soft place in my heart for Queen Victoria as just a prickly, fascinating character. There are a lot of misconceptions about her wardrobe. Specifically, I hear the rumor, possibly true or false, I'd love you to talk about, that she was the one who popularized the white wedding dress.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  I mean, I agree. I always think Victoria is fascinating. I think she has all sorts of, and particularly when you look at her clothes, because again, there are all sorts of assumptions made about her. Sartorially, she's such a kind of distinctive figure. So people had been wearing white wedding dresses for a very long time before she married in 1840. And so if you look in collections of surviving wedding dresses, there are many, many white gowns. I think what she did was that she, as this kind of young queen, and it was a real love story at the time, she was deeply in love with Albert. And I think what the kind of visibility of that, and it was the first time that a royal wedding, there was a photograph of her wearing the dress as well as a portrait.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  So again, it was that kind of modern media and it really made it visible. So it had definitely been fashionable, but she perhaps gave it more visibility.

• 27:30Dana Schwartz?

  I've heard it because white is such an expensive fabric to maintain. If you're someone who doesn't have very many dresses, it would seem very indulgent to have a white dress that's so easily stained. Is that true? Is that sort of the origin?

• 27:44Speaker 03

  No, that is true. And certainly there are many instances of people who either would dye their wedding dress, their white wedding dress after they'd worn it.

• 27:53Dana Schwartz?

  Which my mother did.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Yes, there's a long precedent of this. Or people would wear a colored dress that they could wear then for, it would become like their best dress for church. So yes, there is that kind of association with status with a white wedding dress because it's out of the ordinary.

• 28:11Dana Schwartz?

  My mother dyed her wedding dress like a peach color and had it hemmed shorter so she could wear it, which I find very charming, even if I will never wear that dress.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  It is, and I think that's, you know, there is, they're special. I think what, you know, dress lives long in people's memories. We all have memories of clothes that are, even if we're not that interested in fashion, you know, we all have memories of garments that are significant in our lives for a whole host of reasons, whether it's family, whether it's our own kind of associations. I think that's why it's so powerful.

• 28:46Dana Schwartz?

  The other Queen Victoria sort of sartorial story is of course, after her beloved Prince Albert died, that she wore black for the rest of her life. What did that mean for a queen to do?

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Well, it created a lot of angst in amongst the British establishment because she essentially went into, she went into mourning, which obviously manifested itself through her clothes. And she wore crepe, the kind of very crinkled matte fabric for many years, as well as black silk. And that became her kind of the most notable part of her appearance. And it did cause a lot of anxiety because she suddenly became invisible. And without a visible monarchy, you have rumblings of, well, what are you even for? If you're not performing any of the duties that you would imagine? And there was a great story that I found of Princess Alexandra,

• 29:42Speaker 03

  her Princess of Wales, her daughter-in-law, trying to persuade her to wear just a tiny crown for the occasion of one of her jubilees, just to give the people a kind of taste of royalty. And this is what they've come out to see. And she point blank refused and drove out in a bonnet. So yeah, the expectations of what monarchy should look like, I think, were really important.

• 30:04Dana Schwartz?

  One of my favorite photographs, and of course, it's fascinating that we get photographs of a figure like Queen Victoria is at her, her son Edward's wedding to Alexandra. And I think you might know the photo I'm referring to where Victoria is in a full hood, full mourning outfit in this beautiful wedding portrait, and she's staring at Albert's bust. It's sort of is a-

• 30:27Speaker 03

  It's a snapshot of a moment, isn't it?

• 30:29Dana Schwartz?

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  I love that. Then I, the stories that you could tell of, of poor Alexandra at that point, thinking, because I think Victoria refused to come down to the actual wedding service in St. George's Chapel and stood up in a little kind of viewing area above, where she cried loudly throughout, apparently. And so, yeah, it's not, it's not the happiest of wedding photos.

• 30:53Dana Schwartz?

  And poor Alexandra is just fully, she looks like a, like a cupcake, like she's been dipped in icing. She's just full veils.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Full lace trimmed Victorian bride. She was clever in the way that she maneuvered things. So Alexandra had wanted to wear a dress of Brussels lace, which was very fine European lace. And she was Danish and she had been given this European lace dress as a gift. But Victoria said, absolutely not. You have to wear a dress of British lace. And so what you see in that photograph, it's Alexandra wearing a dress trimmed with honiton lace, which is British lace. But what I found when I studied that dress in, which is in the Royal Collection now in London, was that on the inside of the dress is a panel of European lace that's been stitched inside. And I have no evidence, it's completely my

• 31:47Speaker 03

  own kind of speculation, but I like to think that it was Alexandra's way of kind of just having the last laugh on the day with a piece of lace next to her skin.

• 31:56Dana Schwartz?

  I love that. I think your book is fascinating, the book Dressing the Queen, which is, I think, such a well researched, beautiful rebuke to people who think that clothes are frivolous and ephemeral. It goes into the details about these incredibly skilled workers and artisans, really, who made these clothes. Before I let you go, is there, and this is possibly like asking you to pick a favorite child, do you have a favorite garment of any queen throughout history that stands out to you in your heart?

• 32:29Speaker 03

  I do. And it relates to Alexandra because I think I studied her garments for so long. And I often thought she would probably have hated what I was doing, which was kind of interrogating all these pieces that she wore. But we found a gown of hers in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. And it's this beautiful Edwardian court gown. It's a kind of pale yellow chiffon covered with rhinestones and hand painted irises. So it's kind of mind blowing to look at. But what I found the most interesting, and this for me is where clothes tell you stories that you can't find any other way, was that the gown at the back just didn't fasten in the way that you would imagine. It just kind of sat really

• 33:10Speaker 03

  strangely on the, on the dress form. And by a process of interrogation via curators who had worked with her things before, and also an orthopedic surgeon, it turned out, because I said, well, what would happen? She had scoliosis in her twenties. What would happen to her? She'd had a fever and she'd been very sick. And yeah, the orthopedic surgeon confirmed that it likely would have been scoliosis, that she had hidden away from, she wouldn't want anybody to know that. And the, and this dress would have worked for her body and very cleverly disguised any kind of physicality that, that she didn't want to share. And so I found that really remarkable because it just shows that dress can tell us these kinds of stories.

• 33:55Dana Schwartz?

  That's so beautiful. Dr. Streisand, thank you so much for this conversation. Absolutely fascinating. Again, the book is Dressing the Queen. Really appreciate your time.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Pleasure.

• 34:13Dana Schwartz?

  Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz. Writers for Noble Blood are Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Paul Jaffe, Natasha Lasky, and me, Dana Schwartz. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk and Gomes Griffin, with supervising producer, Reema Ilkayali, and executive producers, Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 34:55Dana Schwartz?

  If you want to learn the wildest facts in history and feel good doing it, there's a new podcast called What the Fact from Connor Tomlinson of Netflix's Love on the Spectrum. Every week, Connor and co-host Carter Roy take three unbelievable true facts and tell you the story behind them. Carter sets the scene. Connor brings the hilarious tangents. Every episode leaves you in a better mood and a little smarter. Follow What the Fact on your favorite podcast app for new episodes every Wednesday.

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• 36:35Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.