Trouser suit ensemble by Michael Donéllan. Red jersey jacket and trousers, printed pink, purple and blue silk blouse, matching silk hat by Simone Mirman; English, 1967.

Woman's trouser suit ensemble comprising a red jersey jacket, trousers and belt with a co-ordinating blouse in blue, pink and purple printed silk and a co-ordinating silk head-scarf style hat.

Photographs exist showing this suit exhibited in Cecil Beaton's Fashion: An Anthology exhibition at V&A in 1971-72, but it does not appear in the catalogue that accompanied the show.

In January 2019 Daniel Milford-Cottam (a former cataloguer/assistant curator in the Textiles and Fashion Department) got in touch after writing the book Fashion in the 1960s to report that he had identfied this hitherto unidentified outfit as the controversial trouser-suit worn by Sheila, Lady Chichester to meet the Queen in July 1967 at the knighting of her husband, Sir Francis Chicester.

Alongside photographs, footage of the ceremony exists on Pathé newsreels, showing Sheila and Francis sailing his boat down the Thames to the knighting, an occasion for which Sheila Chichester could hardly nor safely have worn a traditional dress and hat to assist her husband. Despite this, "at the time, Royal circles declared that by wearing trousers to meet the Queen, the 60-year old Lady Chichester had made the decade's most shocking fashion blunder." (quote from Daniel Milford-Cottam's book)

"I think we can say that this is Sheila Chichester's controversial July 1967 trouser suit ensemble that she wore to her husband's knighting. It's exactly the kind of noteworthy outfit that Beaton would have looked for for the exhibition, and was almost certainly donated by Lady Chichester." (Quote from DMC's email to curators, January 2019)

T.315-1974