As we speak, our Prime Minister is wearing a plain (but of course exquisitely tailored) suit as he represents us at the United Nations. But does he ever hanker for the days when an Australian PM got to wear regalia of fabulous golden splendour?
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Museum of Australian Democracy has just proudly put on display for the first time a coatee (an elaborate jacket) worn at great occasions by our first prime minister, Edmund Barton. The gorgeous object's golden embroidery (stylised representations of oak leaves) is so spectacular that the coatee seems to light up the Old Parliament House space in which it is displayed.
Of course when you are the Museum of Australian Democracy, a grand piece of plumage worn by our first prime minister is a priceless artefact – a kind of secular holy relic – and on Tuesday MOAD curator Stephanie Pfennigwerth enthused over this glorious acquisition.
She explains that it was acquired in 2013 and, after yonks stored away in a Barton family trunk in a damp place, was by then a tattered, stained, forlorn thing. Now, painstakingly restored, it is as flatteringly splendid as it was when Barton (famously large and fleshy, and perhaps needing to wear a corset beneath it) squeezed into it for great occasions.
Pfennigwerth explains that as well as being PM, Sir Edmund was also a Privy Councillor and wore this uniform at events surrounding the coronation of Edward VII in London in 1902. He also wore it at subsequent events, including a 1903 investiture ceremony which, the press reported, "was like a fancy-dress ball, in which the men were the chief figures".
Malcolm Turnbull might envy his predecessor the chance to wear something so fabulous and yet, Pfennigwerth stresses, the much-embossed, much-reinforced coatee was "as heavy as a brick". When first donated to MOAD, the coatee was extensively sweat-stained around the neck testifying that it was surely a sweltering brute of a thing for a statesman to have to wear.
The coatee and the similarly fabulous bicorn hat that accompanied the ensemble (the hat is decorated with ostrich plumes) are star items in MOAD's continuing exhibition, Dress Code: Empire. The exhibition uses Edmund Barton's coatee as a vehicle to explore his life and Australia's changing relationship with the British Empire. The museum says that the exhibition looks at how the uniform provided intimate evidence of under-explored aspects of Sir Edmund's personality.
"Harnessing the potency of clothing as a presence, a medium and an act of imagination, we found the man," MOAD believes.
