Did the Prince of Ligne double as the Princess of the same area? 'cause "his" wardrobe doesn't seem to be very masculine overall...
I took the trouble to look the Prince de Ligne up on the Web. Very interesting when you look at the costumes, because you can see they mainly come from 3 different time periods and in fact the website I read listed 3 de Lignes who were major figures in their day.
The earliest one was Claude Lamoral de Ligne, who was the ambassador of the Spanish Netherlands during the late 1600s. His visit to London was noted in both John Evelyn's and Samuel Pepys' diaries; especially noting the richness, number of horses, etc. Apparently he made quite an impression. The next one lived 1735-1814; probably the lad with the embroidered suits similar to what Bjarne makes. And the last one lived during the end of the last century.
As to the feminine clothing, I rather assumed it was one of those "inherit the castle, inherit everything in the attic" situations where the current title-holder owns everything including the former clothing of his female ancestors. Of course, we don't really know for sure that these items were all owned directly by the previous Princes de Ligne - it could be that one person just started a collection and bought items on the open market like any other collector.
Adele North Vancouver, BC (west coast of Canada)
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