Curtains fit for a queen

By Amery Boyer

I will never forget my first glimpse of “the dress”. It was dusk when I arrived at Millie Hawes’ house in Granville Ferry in the fall of 2009. All I could see was the outline of a sleeve and a bodice in a plastic garment bag hooked over one of Millie’s French doors. But even then, I felt its presence.

Millie first made costumes for her kids when they were at school but hadn’t done much until some time in 1996. Then there was a meeting at the Annapolis Royal Town Hall about the Port Royal 400th anniversary in 2005. Both she and her husband Jon attended and she signed up to make historical costumes. She and Jon were the first volunteers for the 400th anniversary and ended up being the only ones on a Volunteer Committee.

Fast forward to 2009, and there is another anniversary in the offing, the 300th anniversary of the renaming of Annapolis Royal from Port Royal in 1710. And of course, it wasn’t long before some local brainstorming around a Queen Anne Picnic resulted in the idea of bringing back Queen Anne for the year. There already was an Anne at that gathering and she volunteered to be the Queen for a Year – Anne Crossman.

THINKING ABOUT THE DRESS

Millie began thinking about “the dress” before she did anything. She looked at the sign at the Queen Anne Inn in Annapolis Royal which depicts a bigger than life-size sitting portrait of Queen Anne. “If they thought about it at all, most people in town would imagine that’s what Queen Anne would look like,” says Millie. “That’s what people would have imagined she would look like if she ever came here which, of course, she didn’t,” said Millie. She did a fair amount of research online as well.

Millie said she was very concerned that most people would only see the Queen from a distance, so she wanted the costume decorations and accessories to stand out. For instance, if people saw Queen Anne in the Natal Day Parade they would enjoy the sight even from a distance. It is all of these things that have become “the dress”.

Millie thinks that she started looking for fabric in the summer of 2009 and that she started making “the dress” in August. She asked people who she knew had a stash of fabric if they could contribute and they did. Some of the materials weren’t really suitable but there were a few gems.

MATERIAL DONATED

Once the word got around, people who had made costumes for plays and things like that were intrigued, and wanted to know if there was anything they could do. Almost all of the fabric Millie used was donated with a couple of pieces bought at Frenchy’s. Some of the gems that were donated included silk fabric, brocade, beads, and pearls from broken necklaces. Linda Brown gave her a lot of the beads and Millie bought some. Corinne Frantel donated some red fabric. She doesn’t know this because the piece of burgundy satin material she gave Millie a while back ended up being just the thing.

Linda also gave her most of the lace. “She’s obviously done a lot of sewing in her time,” said Millie. Most of what Millie had to buy, she got from one trip to Fabricville in Halifax. That excursion got the fur fabric for the gold cloak.

Most of the dress is made from curtains. According to Millie, they started out as curtains in someone’s drawing room. Over the years, they moved around and eventually they were found unsuitable for the houses people live in now and they ended up in somebody’s trunk. “Had all of the fabric been purchased, it would have cost at least $200.00,” says Millie. Another source has estimated the value of this very elaborate costume at over $15,000.00.

STARTED IN SEPTEMBER

The dress was begun in September. Millie started with the bodice and when Anne first tried it on, Millie says you could tell from her face that this would become something special. “It’s Anne who drove me to do it because she is so positive about the whole thing.”

Millie thinks she may have spent most nights on the dress - with few exceptions - an average of four or five hours a night or during the day. That adds up to over 560 hours.

The most fascinating thing about the dress, according to Millie, is what happens when people see it. “Anne grows at least two inches taller every time she tries it on” says Millie. “People will mostly see Queen Anne sitting down because she couldn’t walk around very well. She was in her early 40’s, had had 18 pregnancies, and was crippled with gout. So the focus for the gown had to be on how she would have appeared at court, i.e. sitting down.”

THE DRESS

The dress is gold with burgundy trim and white lace. The stomacher, the piece that goes down the front, is what gives the bodice form in the front. Costume jewelry was purchased to adorn it. Heavily beaded cuffs and collar are designed to draw attention to the Queen’s countenance. The necklace is a pearl choker with a ruby drop. Matching jewelry adorns the stomacher in a swag pattern. There are matching earrings, a brooch and a bracelet. The lining came from cotton sheets purchased at Frenchy’s. The front panel of the skirt, the petticoat, has gold beading all along the frills. (Millie didn’t think I should say this, but the beads are recycled Christmas tree beads.) The sleeves have big ruffs, with cuffs that go around and above the elbow – Millie says that this type of dress would have been for court appearances and ceremonial occasions only. All of this finery would not have been practical for daily activities.

Although Millie has been working on this dress for three and a half months, she has discovered that it does not crease which was just luck considering all of the fabrics and materials involved. The dress uses six or seven yards of materials, and weighs about five pounds, or 7.2 pounds (3.3 kilograms) with the cape.

THE CAPE

The cape is made of gold fabric which possibly began life as a plastic backed tablecloth, something that a grandmother would have placed a potted plant on. Gold slippers were purchased at Sears.

And then there’s the crown. Millie has never made a crown before. She approached local sculptor and blacksmith Brad Hall. He made three prototypes, ending up with a lightweight crown in aluminum. The jewels came from Michael’s, a craft shop in Halifax. Although Millie only needed a half bag of jewels, she could only get them by the bag at a cost of $25.00. Red felt will line the base of the crown and the cap will be covered in red velvet. It will be gold. Once complete, the crown is expected to weigh about two or three pounds.

Underneath the crown, a special wig was fashioned by costumier Ken Nye. The wig has long dark brown ringlets and curls at the forehead, just as in the portraits that Millie has been able to find. Millie says she is aiming for a light weight crown because kings and queens used to suffer from headaches due to the weight of their crowns. “Even Queen Elizabeth had to practice wearing her crown before her coronation.”

The dress (and Queen Anne) was unveiled at the Bishop’s and the Legion and Town levées in Annapolis Royal on January 1, 2010.

AMERY BOYER is Queen Anne’s Lady-In-Waiting and CAO of the Town of Annapolis Royal.