The Clothing Of The Romanov Costume Ball 1903
- SomeWhat strange
- Mar 30, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: May 9
If you want to see some totally unnecessary clothing, then look no further. These portrait photographs of Russia’s ruling Romanovs were taken in 1903 at the Winter Palace in majestic St. Petersburg. Czar Nicholas II and his 390 guests partied for 2 days with dancing, music and food on the first day and a masked ball on the second, full of sexual excess and debauchery.
Ladies wore dresses embroidered with precious stones and kokoshniks (head-dresses) adorned with their finest family jewels, while the men donned richly decorated caftans and boyar-style fur hats. Nicholas himself was robed in the gold brocade of 17th-century Russian tsar Alexey Mikhailovich, and his wife, Alexandra, wore the robes of the first wife of Alexey Mikhailovich, Empress Maria Ilinichna.
The Czarina’s dress, pictured here, was a brocade dress adorned with silver satin and pearls, embellished by a diamond and emerald-studded crown and a magnificent emerald necklace selected by the court jeweler, Carl Fabergé. Today, such a dress would cost approximately 10 million euros, but doesn't she look glum. (Maybe she knew what was coming,)
Of course, it's not a great idea to parade your wealth in front of people who have nothing. Outside the palace the mood was dark. The Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovitch dubbed the event "the last spectacular ball in the history of the empire ... [but] a new and hostile Russia glared through the large windows of the palace ... while we danced, the workers were striking and the clouds in the Far East were hanging dangerously low."
Fast forward to the night of 17th July 1918, following a revolution a year earlier, the Romanov family were shot and bayoneted to death, their bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, where they were stripped, buried, and mutilated with grenades to prevent identification.
These colourised images were created by Olga Shirnina
For more images go to
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