Duchess of Cambridge at Royal Opera House

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Embed from Getty Images

The Duchess of Cambridge visited the Costume Department at The Royal Opera House in London on January 16th to learn more about their use of textiles, commissioning of fabrics and supply chain. The visit allowed her to find out more about the scale of the department’s work and how different textiles influence various costumes. The Duchess visited the pattern room where she was shown the process of working and creating costumes for a new production with designers, including sourcing fabrics and samples. The Duchess then visited the dye shop where staff will showcase different techniques including dyeing, hand-painting, staining garments and digital printing which allows the team to reproduce historic fabrics no longer available. She also met costumiers in the Work Room working on multiple new shows. The Duchess met with Royal Ballet Principal Dancers Lauren Cuthbertson, Laura Morera and Vadim Muntagirov who explained how various factors such as lighting, interaction and movement influence the designs of their costumes, before she watched the dancers rehearsing the romantic Ballet ‘The Two Pigeons’. The textile and manufacturing industry is an area of interest to the Duchess. Her great-great-grandfather, Francis Martineau Lupton, was a mill owner who ran the family’s successful textile manufacturing business, William Lupton & Company, with his three brothers.

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