Meet the Bristol Tiktoker bringing royal fashion to life

Rosie Harte never expected her career as a historian to begin on Tiktok, but after making videos in lockdown, she now has nearly half a million followers, and has tried on tiaras at Sotheby’s and is soon publishing a new book based on her social media research.

Bristol24/7 spoke to Rosie about how she got into royal fashion, working in the Bristol Old Vic heritage department and why her content has generated so much interest among young fans.

How did your love for royal fashion first start?

Getting dressed is something that everybody does every single day, and the choices that go into that process are very telling of the lives we lead and the sort of person we want to be. Applying that process to people of the past then becomes a very familiar way of understanding them! My interest in royal fashion history stemmed from that – I wanted to see if I could make these grand historical figures feel more human.

@theroyalwardrobe Anne invented body positivity: confirmed ✅ #fashionhistory #fashion #fashionhistory #royalfashion #historicdress #royalfamily #anneofdenmark #17thcenturyfashion ♬ Witch Familiar (Classical) [Classic](143628) – dice

Where do you live in Bristol and is being a TikTok creator a full-time profession?

I grew up around Clifton, and lived in Bristol for most of my life! Currently I split my time between TikTok and working as a historian. I work with museums and galleries to bring their collections onto different social media platforms and contribute to documentaries and news broadcasts! Working on my TikTok can be pretty time consuming! I always make sure my videos are well researched and 100 per cent accurate, so it can take a while to put just one video concept together.

What are your favourite royal pieces?

Anything to do with tiaras! They’re my favourite things to research and always go down well with my followers. Last year I was very fortunate to be invited to a preview of the Sotheby’s Tiara exhibition in London, and had the chance to try on some of the tiaras on display. That was pretty magical! They’re also a very good way to discuss colonialism; while these pieces may be beautiful, do we always know where the stones have come from?

@theroyalwardrobe So much tiara content coming this way… ? #SothebysJubilee #thankyou #bereal #tiara @sothebys @TikTok UK ♬ Material Girl – Saucy Santana

Why do you think people on TikTok are so interested in royal fashion?

I think it’s for the same reasons I am! Most of my followers are teens and young adults, which is a demographic that can be quite challenging to tap into from a historical angle.

I think the reason my content has resonated so well with this group is that it’s a new and more human approach to talking about stuffy old historical figures! It’s about making them feel like more than just dates in a history book, and linking them to the present day by discussing one of the oldest human rituals – getting dressed!

What made you start a TikTok account and did you expect it to blow up?

Pre-pandemic I was working at the Bristol Old Vic, where I spent some time with the heritage team there. It’s a theatre with a very long history, and so the team there were always looking for particularly creative ways to tell those stories!

It was always a question of how to take very beige artefacts like newspapers and playbills and turn them into something exciting and loud. When lockdown came and suddenly I was spending a lot of time on social media, I started to wonder if I could use TikTok to talk about history.

I began posting videos in the summer of 2020, and remember being shocked when one of my videos hit 1000 views! By early 2021, I had my first truly viral video which looked at the history of fashionable big foreheads – it currently has about 7 million views. From then on I focused on figuring out the best method of presenting history on TikTok and it brought me to a following of 400,000!

Your debut book The Royal Fashion is being published in June. Can you describe what the journey was like, writing this?

‘The Royal Wardrobe’ is really a culmination of everything that has gone into my TikTok account and then some! It will take the reader on a journey through the reigns of every monarch from Henry VII through to present day, including famous faces like Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria, but also some lesser known royals who definitely deserve some attention.

From Princess Diana’s wedding dress to Charles II’s wig made of pubic hair – it’s going to be a very eventful tale! I began writing this book in 2021 after discussing with Headline Publishing how my content might look in book form.

Having my TikTok account has been invaluable for the process – all I have to do is look at my comments and I get weekly feedback on what people are interested in knowing. I can see what people already knew, what they didn’t and what they want to hear more of.

How do you feel about being a part of the TikTok 2023 Creators to Watch list?

I honestly can’t say just how excited I am! TikTok feels like a real community, and it’s so rewarding to be a part of it. This year is bound to be the most exciting year of my career so far with the book release in June and of course the coronation in May, so it is incredibly exciting to know that TikTok have noticed that too.

Rosie Harte’s, The Royal Wardrobe will be released on June 8, 2023.

Main photo: Rosie Harte

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