The Imperial family’s coronation ensembles
Marc Bohan, Dior’s head designer, created coronation outfits for Princesses Shams and Fatemeh that were of white satin and had high, round necklines, as well as long sleeves;47 the ensemble worn by Princess Rosa Pahlavi (b. 1940) possessed the same characteristics. However, the above-mentioned dresses differed in terms of surface decoration. The trains on the dresses of the Pahlavi sisters—a prerogative of their royal status—attached at the shoulders and were 40 inches long,48 reflecting their subordinate position within the Imperial Iranian court relative to Empress Farah, who wore a coronation robe measuring an incredible eight metres in overall length.
Empress Farah and her entourage’s outfits were also of white satin and, given Farah’s preoccupation with the British coronation of 1953, Bohan’s decision to use this fabric rather than any other may have taken its inspiration from Norman Hartnell’s own use of white satin for the British Royal family’s 1953 coronation gowns. Not all the Pahlavi women opted for Dior designs and white satin, however: Princess Ashraf, the Shah’s twin sister, and Princess Shahnaz, his daughter by his first wife, Princess Fawzia of Egypt (1921-2013), wore silver gowns encrusted with elaborate beadwork from the House of Patou. Their gowns—still extant and currently housed at Sa’dabad Palace’s costume museum (see figures 1.15 to 1.18)—must have stood out amongst the Dior designs, which aimed for uniformity rather than variety, when they posed with the rest of the family for photographs at the coronation.
While aunt and niece may appear to have been fashion mavericks, they were playing their role in building an image of the House of Pahlavi in the mould of European dynasties. The coronations of European monarchs were dominated by gowns in white, silver and gold; in fact, Russian empresses had traditionally worn cloth-of-silver for their coronations, and the same was true for royal brides until well into the nineteenth century. At European courts, trains had fallen into disuse after World War II, making the Pahlavi women’s outfits, which had detachable court trains, seem rather old-fashioned. Nonetheless, to the bedazzled Western onlooker, their opulent costumes would have conveyed the impression that the Pahlavi dynasty was both venerable and ancient.
The women guests were attired in long, pastel-coloured gowns accessorized with brimless hats and long gloves, in accordance with the dress code for the event,49 completing the picture of a Western-style monarchy that was respectful of Islamic conventions regarding modest feminine dress. However, the dozens of chador-clad women from the countryside who, as Hélène de Turckheim (1921-2011) reported in Le Figaro, arrived in Tehran in processions of Cadillacs the night before the coronation must have served as a reminder that the ceremony was taking place in a conservative Muslim country.50 Indeed, one wonders whether the Pahlavi regime’s White Revolution of 1963 and Family Protection Act of 1967—both of which aimed to empower and uplift the status of Iranian women—had in any way touched the lives of women in villages. While the presence of women at the 1967 coronation was in itself groundbreaking and received much positive coverage in the foreign press,51 the Shah’s top-down approach to modernizing Iran remained limited to his court and the educated Iranian elite.
Princess Ashraf’s dress
Princess Ashraf Pahlavi (far left in figure 1.14) elected to wear a gown of a silver-coloured fabric whose surface has clear plastic cutout flowers stitched onto it (figures 1.15 and 1.16). Plant-like motifs, embroidered with sequins (including those that are fashioned to resemble leaves), bugle beads, pale-green and colourless diamantés, as well as imitation pearls, form a second layer of decoration. The whole effect of such lavish embellishment, particularly the highly polished, light-reflective bugle beads and leaf-like sequins, is one of shimmering iridescence. The round neckline, sleeve cuffs and skirt hem are more densely covered with embroidery than the rest of the gown; three identical horizontal bands of foliate motifs decorate the hemline (figure 1.16).
As figure 1.14 shows, Princess Ashraf wore the gown with a court train; this probably measured 40 inches in length from the wearer’s heels, like the trains created for her sisters, Princess Shams and Princess Fatemeh. Ashraf’s train, now missing, was made of the same textile as the gown and attached at the shoulders by means of small snap buttons, some of which can still be seen on the gown.52
Princess Shahnaz’s dress and jewellery
Princess Shahnaz Pahlavi, who stands between her father and Princess Ashraf in figure 1.14, donned a gown with short sleeves and a square neckline (see figures 1.17 and 1.18) for the coronation. She completed the look with a tiara and pair of earrings (figures 1.19 and 1.20) from a Van Cleef and Arpels parure made specially for the occasion.
As figure 1.18 indicates, Shahnaz’s silver-hued outfit is covered with a network of clear bugle beads and also studded here and there with diamantés. Additionally, zig-zagging lines of embroidery, composed of clear beads, diamantés (round- and marquise-shaped), faux pearls and mother-of-pearl ornamentation (in the form of disks and shell-like elements), run horizontally down the dress, becoming more concentrated towards the hemline. On the skirt, the wavy lines of embellishment are interspersed with metallic sequins, beads and diamantés clustered together to create floral motifs.
Shahnaz originally wore this glittering gown with a court train, now missing, of the same textile. Small snap buttons, some of which still remain, would have secured the train to the shoulder area of her dress.53
Princess Shams’s dress and jewellery
The Shah of Iran’s elder sister, Princess Shams Pahlavi, who is visible at far right in the group photograph in figure 1.14, wore a gown with embroidered bands of imitation amethysts, emeralds, silver, rubies and diamonds.54 She paired the outfit with a tiara and a pair of earrings (figures 1.21 and 1.22) from a parure that Van Cleef and Arpels had made for her to wear to the coronation.
Princess Fatemeh’s dress
Princess Fatemeh Pahlavi was the daughter of Reza Pahlavi and his fourth wife, Esmat Dowlatshahi (1905-95); she and the Shah of Iran were half-siblings as they had the same father. Figure 1.23 shows Fatemeh’s coronation gown at Dior’s atelier in Paris (photograph at right), as well as a portrait of Fatemeh (left) wearing the gown without its detachable train. As the photographs in figure 1.23 indicate, the dress was adorned with four horizontal bands comprising embroidered abstract motifs,55 which increased in width as they ran down the dress.
Both Princess Shams and Princess Fatemeh were loyal Dior customers; Dior in Paris rather than Monsieur Pierre in Tehran made their coronation gowns.56 Furthermore, out of the six gowns seen in figure 1.26 (a photograph taken inside a Dior workroom), two had been made for Shams, while three were intended for Fatemeh’s wardrobe.
Dress and tiara worn by Princess Rosa
Princess Rosa Pahlavi (née Bozorgnia), second wife of Prince Ahmad Reza Pahlavi (1925-81), a half-brother of the Shah of Iran, also attended the coronation. As figure 1.24 shows, Princess Rosa’s gown had heavy embroidery from the elbows to the wrists and below the knees. Her outfit, however, appears to have originally been made for Princess Fatemeh, for the dress in figure 1.24 is the same as the Dior garment at far left in figure 1.26, which has a sign with “S.A.I. LA PRINCESSE FATEMEH PAHLAVI” written on it. Why Princess Rosa wore a dress that was ostensibly created for Princess Fatemeh’s use is a mystery. Perhaps Rosa borrowed the dress for the coronation or Dior mistakenly attributed Fatemeh as the intended wearer of the gown.
Princess Rosa wore a fine Qajar-era tiara currently in the collection of the Treasury of National Jewels to complement her towering sixties hairstyle (figure 1.25). Dating from the latter part of the nineteenth century, the tiara comprises an octagonal rose-pink spinel set in a high diamond-framed gallery (figure 1.25).57 Diamond-studded golden spikes shaped like blossoms radiate from the spinel, which weighs an estimated 25 carats and forms the centre of a sunburst design.58 The shorter spikes terminate in flat-backed cabochon emeralds shaped like teardrops; these alternate with longer spikes tipped with pearls.59 The largest of the emeralds is estimated to weigh 20 carats.60
Mrs. Farideh Diba’s and Princess Farahnaz’s dresses
For Mrs. Farideh Diba (1920-80), Empress Farah’s mother, Bohan designed a white satin gown along the same lines as the outfits he made for members of the Imperial family,61 with the exception that her dress had bell sleeves and a V-shaped seam that created the impression of a high waist. Mrs. Diba’s gown, which can be seen at centre-right in figure 1.26, had a skirt border composed of glittering beadwork, which also embellished the sleeves. As Mrs. Diba was not a Pahlavi, she did not wear a detachable court train; instead, the skirt of her gown extended itself at the back, forming a curved train that was under 24 inches in length, that is, substantially less than the 40-inch trains worn by the Shah’s sisters.62 Figure 1.26 reveals the skirt train to have had the same rich embroidery as the rest of the dress.
The smallest Dior dress at the coronation belonged to four-year-old Princess Farahnaz, a daughter of the Imperial couple, who stands next to the Crown Prince in figure 1.14 and in front of Mrs. Diba in figure 1.27. Her dress of white silk moiré was stitched in Pierre Krattinger’s workroom in Tehran, like the coronation garments of the Empress and her entourage.63 Farahnaz’s ankle-length outfit had short sleeves and a turquoise velvet sash; turquoise embroidery with a Persian motif decorated much of the dress.64
Notes
1. Eric Pace, “Iran Is Preparing for a Coronation,” New York Times, October 26, 1967, TimesMachine. I prefer Pace’s translation, which clarifies that the shahbanu is the consort of the shah, to the somewhat vague one offered by Robert Steele: “lady shah;” Steele, “Crowning the ‘Sun of the Aryans’: Mohammad Reza Shah’s Coronation and Monarchical Spectacle in Pahlavi Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 53, no. 2 (May 2021): 188, https://doi.org/10.1017/S002074382000121X.”
2. Steele, “‘Sun of the Aryans’,” 177, 184-85.
3. Abbas Milani, The Shah (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 83-88, Internet Archive. The British had been completely against the idea of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi succeeding his father and had sought out alternative candidates, but ultimately accepted his accession, telling themselves and warning the new Shah that they could always remove him from power, if necessary.
4. Steele, “‘Sun of the Aryans’,” 181, 183.
5. Ibid., 177.
6. Ibid., 187-88.
7. Gholam Reza Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009), 248, Internet Archive; ibid., 188.
8. Steele, “‘Sun of the Aryans’,” 190.
9. Ibid., 184.
10. Ibid., 185-86; Eric Pace, “Festive Teheran Set for Shah’s Coronation Today,” New York Times, October 26, 1967, TimesMachine.
11. Steele, “‘Sun of the Aryans’,” 187-88.
12. Ibid., 182.
13. Ibid., 188; Pace, “Preparing for a Coronation.”
14. Pace, “Shah’s Coronation Today.”
15. Pace, “Preparing for a Coronation.”
16. Steele, “‘Sun of the Aryans’,” 187, 191.
17. “Guzarish-i ʿamaliyat-i hisabdari-yi Shura-yi Markazi-yi Jashn-i Shahanshahi-yi Iran az aval-i mihr mah-i 1339 lighayat shahrivar mah-i 1351,” October 5, 1972, in Bazm-i ahriman: Jashn-ha-yi 2500 salih-yi shahanshahi bih rivayat-i asnad-i SAVAK va darbar, vol. 4 (Tehran: Markaz-i Barrasi-yi Asnad-i Tarikhi-yi Vizarat-i Ittilaʿat, 1999), 389–91, cited in ibid., 182.
Her-storic Royal Dress 