Conservation of Queen Victoria's silk shoes 

This woman needs to read bedtime stories her voice is so pleasant

They look so delicate like they'd get ruined easily yet they're so beautiful

We are all anxious to know what size or equivalent size.

I’ve sewn since I was 10 and I would LOVE to work in conservation. You’re SO lucky!

It's got to be a trick of the camera making those shoes so large looking...she was sooooo tiny in her youth and one's feet usually stop growing long before the rest of us, but they look huge to me. Really, really cool national heirloom artifact!

I would love to hear Rosie Chamberlin describe more of her textile works! She is so pleasant!

I honestly am so mad at myself that I went into criminology and not conservation for a degree my absolute dream would be to work alongside like minded people who love history and historic objects such as I do thank you for caring it's really appreciated

I'm no fashion expert but maybe those shoes were long for a reason? Victorian ladies wore floor length dresses and skirts. I'm thinking may she wanted a bit of her shoes to show from underneath her clothes? Especially when she curtsied or sat down.

Victoria looked to Have a narrow but long foot. That's taking into consideration the extended toe design would lengthen the foot appearance.

Very interesting job!!! Is so incredible how we humans are always trying to conserve the objects from the past, but so little we are beholding the values of those days.....

She has a lovely voice

As for the people being weirded out by her shoes size: 1840s women’s footwear generally had that shape. Her foot shape probably is just fine, it had this shape because of the fashion of the time.

I just saw those shoes a few weeks ago on vacation! Amazing to see the work that went into getting them there!

They look enormous!!☘🐾

girl you talented

Thank you so much for sharing something so wonderful! You are saving history and it's truly amazing!😍

Wow that was beautiful work thanks for saving a treasure 🙏

They look like Tim Berton designed them

It is amazing that there are many of her items available. I really like the style of her shoes, they are lovely.

Wow! You are very good at your job! Well done!!

I love the shapes... SO FUNKY

Rosie is so talented!!

I lived in the UK for a while, so I can tell that this woman is truly overexcited and bursting with pride an joy.

Good job! They look good as new.

Beautiful work with this conservation :)

This was fascinating!

Ok I don't often fall in love w shoes but these are soooo cool 😎!!!

Wow!!! What an amazing job!!!!! You are definitely talented!!!

Absolutely fascinating! Such considered, delicate work by Textile Conservator Rosie Chamberlin.

I wonder what happened to Queen Victoria's other shoes. I know when she was old and portly, she liked to wear sandals, which were not visible under her petticoats. But she must have had hundreds of pairs of shoes and boots.

What an incredible treasure. And so delicate and tiny!

Assuming these were worn only inside, water or dirt would have ruined them.

Why am I obsessed with this? I sought old ladies to befriend as a teen so I could be friends with Victorians. WTF. Well, at least I could. I even used to nick cigarettes for an 100 year old lady in 1986 just because...

Wonderful to see this , I would love to see more video's like this about the Royal Families belongings thru history . Thank you very much

I’d be pooping myself everytime I put a pin in the fabric thinking ‘what if I break this, would I be shot?’

What a crafts woman. Those shoes are priceless. How lovely to handle then.

Was so looking forward to seeing the end result, especially with before and after pics....

Love the shoes!!;

Very interesting video. She explained the step by step process she took to restore the shoes. I also wondered what size she wore, understanding the different sizing classifications between the US and UK.

Brilliant,! So interesting.....

Cool video!

yup 😎

Well done🤗🙂

Wow those pumps

Admirable el ciudad of, ya lo querria para mi Paris , gentle que TRABAJAR combo ustedes, con sea dedication

I’m sleep-deprived to the point where I misread ‘Beyond’ as ‘Beyoncé' and remained confuse in the entirety of the video.

I wish we had a picture of her wearing them!

Surprised she is not wearing gloves. Material that old can only imagine our oils ruin the silk

Those pumps were a riot

Queen Victoria had nine-inch feet and the shoes are approximately a size 3 or 3½. My size 12 would be gigantic next to these.

Big shoes!!!!

Wow

Come sono belli questi tronchetti di raso o seta. Il modello è così gentile con il tacco semirocchetto. Complimenti per la riparaziionem.

When you patch the damage you erase the evidence of the history of the item. I know the patch is temporary but if I were to see these shoes in a museum I would look at the worn area and see something familiar. My own shoes get worn down in a similar way and this fact links me to the past, it makes the queen a more relatable and real person.

Cool beans!

It's nice to see when a servant people, maybe wearing their only pair of shoes, worked for no reason for other people that the only thing that they have done is born wealthy. These shoes have passing across the streets while in the same instant, other people were starved. Even today, some people find atractive and needable to serve kings and queens. What a world. By the way, as only shoes, they are kind of art. Congrats for the shoemaker.

Interesting that some commenters view them as enormous shoes and some as tiny ones. Am curious what Victoria would wear in modern sizing.

The shoe is so narrow. I wonder how the underside looks. If arches and the foot shape is taken into consideration.

I like her voice

What is this inhuman foot shape

I wonder how comfortable they were?

Wish they would have kept the shoes in original condition.

Молодец! Отремонтировала.

♡

How exciting for you... working with actual pieces of history....

Interesting. I was surprised she is not wearing gloves to protect the fabric from oils on her hands

Given the lack of historical clothing from previous monarchs, does QEII keep all of her clothes, bags, and shoes for future museum display? Is there any information as to how her previous outfits are catalogued and stored so that future historians can review them?

Conservation and presentation is always fascinating--and lord almighty is that conservation absolutely beautiful--but I'm not sure if I agree with the conservator's reasoning for concealing the damage here. She said she wanted people to notice the object, not the damage... but isn't the damage part of the object? To me the most interesting part of this video is when she explains how the damage came about--not because some tragedy befell these shoes, but simply because they were built in such a way that they wouldn't last. And you know, that's crazy to me. Somebody made these shoes by hand--which is something I've done, it takes forever and it's absolutely gruelling work--over the course of weeks or possibly months and they were perfectly willing to have it all fall apart in days because that was fashion. How many pairs of custom-made shoes must the Queen have gone through, and, by extension: How many literal thousands of man-hours must have gone into making shoes for this one woman's feet to look pretty, even knowing perfectly well that her feet will rarely be seen anyway? It's just insane to think, and it says so much about the structure of Victorian society, the importance of the Queen and the importance of her dress that it just seems a shame to me that anyone would want to hide it. I guess I do understand wanting people to be able to see the shoes as they might have appeared while the Queen herself was wearing them (as certainly she would not have been walking around in torn shoes,) but can't there be some compromise? Isn't it possible for a museum exhibit to tell more than one story? I wonder, since the damage is only on one side, if it would be possible to show the undamaged side, and then show the damaged side, showing guests first the beauty of the finished product and then the fragile, disposable nature of its construction. But of course, museum curators have a lot of things to take into consideration when planning an exhibit, and thankfully this conservation is done in such a way that it can be undone and redone differently if a later exhibit allows for a different approach.

Rosie if you're reading this please consider becoming a content creator and doing ASMR videos, I could listen to your voice all day! :)

Are these shoes a US size 7 or UK 37? They look rather large for her height.

Any chance we could know: when she wore these (obviously not a lot), what size they were (they looked bigger than I imagine Victoria’s foot to be as she was so short) and how did you acquire them?

Thank you for allowing us to see! What size would they be ?

How did it just disappear omg😻

Is it me or are those shoes incredibly narrow for the length?

I'm surprised that the conservator isn't wearing gloves while touching the shoes so much!

Looks like something Juno Birch would wear

por favor los invito a que coloquen los subtitulos en idioma español para apreciar mejor el video, muchas gracias.-2-2-21

I'm really surprised by this! I figured as a royal, Queen Victoria likely had many pairs of shoes. Were they just lost over time? Maybe they wil pop up in other collections?

She narrated really well.

So what’s up with the shoes?

How old are they

Are...are thos-... Are those size 13 nikes?

Those are some big pointed shoes makes me wonder what she's compensating for but I wonder what her feet really looks like are the funky looking

Queen Victoria, for such a small woman, had long feet.

I dont know which is creepier, the shoes, or rosy

As a woman who has owned shoes....she either loved these shoes, or hated them. Shoes unloved wouldn't have been frequently worn, so they would not have received the general abuse shoes normally do, and they would have had a better chance of aging well/remaining whole. A very loved pair, on the other hand, would have been fixed whenever needed, and her staff would not have dreamed of throwing them away, and thus saved.

Look at those tiny ankles..

The wear and tear shows she wore them.

Everyone knows she was tiny yet "plump" at this point in her life. Anybody know what size shoes she wore at this point in her life?

How do you walk on those? Did she have long toes lol

Lunghissime!

I’m the same hight as queen Victoria and those shoes look soooooo long, what size was she?

What happened to Queen Victoria’s wedding dress? Did it survive ?

These silk Balenciagas though

Ok but those shoes look scarily disproportionate. As in, to the point where they look terrifying.

Roach stompers!

Lol. Size 11? Wow. It's good the dress covered her feet mostly...:')

Big size

Those shoes look weird and long. I know it a different time but it looks strange.

Its a lil hard to believe that was her shoe. How can u actually say she wore that exact shoe? I mean were they found in the house years ago or what?