Regency period

A black McQueen dress with a high empire waist alludes to the prevailing silhouette of the Regency period; acorns, a symbol of stability common in British decorative arts, dangle from the torso. A nearby 1820s silk gauze dress, also in black, features a pattern of anchors and crowns celebrating the might of Britain’s navy, the largest in the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.