Abstract The final Stuart monarch, Queen Anne, has often been overlooked in studies of visual and material culture, particularly of fashion and dress. This article is the first to undertake a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the wardrobe accounts of Queen Anne, situating her consumption within the context of the eighteenth‐century fashion marketplace and her representational strategies. Doing so reveals the queen to be a more complex and active participant in fashion culture, and her own image‐making, than has previously been acknowledged. With the help of those around her, including staff in her Office of the Robes such as her Mistress of the Robes, Anne used contemporary fashions like the mantua gown and informal conventions in portraiture to craft a distinct image of an English, and then British, protestant queen. This spoke to her moment and articulated sovereignty in distinctly early eighteenth‐century terms.
Sarah A. Bendall (Thu,) studied this question.