Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coronation gown


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. –  Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 03:57, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Coronation gown

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This is an attempt to provide a dictionary definition for something nebulous and infrequently required. Each Coronation gown is different depending on the date, country, and other circumstances, so they do not follow universal codes or follow a standardised pattern, so I can't think of an appropriate redirect target for this - for example, Coronation of the British monarch covers British coronation robes, but a redirect here would be to ignore other countries and their individual coronation robes. A disambiguation page listing all articles dealing with various coronation traditions might be a possibility, but possibly clunky? It was originally a test page quickly redirected to "Evening gown" but that's not really a fitting target either. Have been doing a bit of looking around but can't really see that there is a "type" of gown widely thought of as a coronation gown, as distinct to evening dresses/ballgowns. Mabalu (talk) 10:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep This is not a dictionary definition; it's a WP:STUB. If one wanted to redirect then Category:Coronation_gowns would be an obvious target.  There's plenty more to say about notable gowns which don't have their own articles yet and it's all a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion.  AFD is not cleanup. Warden (talk) 10:47, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Can we redirect to categories? Wasn't sure if that was allowed, or I would have done it. Mabalu (talk) 10:50, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment The style of dress worn by women at coronations is an important topic but as pointed out it varies with place and time. There are also vital differences in status - a queen regnant is one thing, the female consort of the ruler may be an active participant or merely an observer, and clothing may reflect that. Then of course there are the other women present in differing roles. I too rather doubt that there is such a thing as a coronation gown as a generic concept - the term would be anachronistic for most British coronations and it would be absurd to suggest that the garment did or did not qualify for inclusion on the arbitrary question of whether the relevant item of dress was styled a gown by contemporaries. I agree with Colonel Warden that this is something that ought to be in Wikipedia and even for the UK this is passed over in Coronation of the British monarch. The only relevant cover I can find in Wikipedia, again for the UK, is in Court uniform and dress in the United Kingdom which does not discuss the monarch/consort at all. Nor would that do as a redirect because it serves only Britain and is not relevant to the dress worn by Josephine at the Coronation of Napoleon I, say. Significantly, in neither that nor the UK examples of Queens Consort does the 'gown' appear important in its own right but was part of the ensemble. There will be plenty of sources out there telling us whether in different cultures special ceremonial garments were worn by women at such events. My guess would be that women will normally wear something based on high status fashionable or customary dress and that the symbolic element will most often be an over-garment such as robe or mantle. It is an article yet to be written. --AJHingston (talk) 12:05, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I did find this book, which seems to write at great length on "coronation gowns" as part of a Texan tradition - further confusing and muddying the question. The idea in itself is encyclopaedic, but the title and conception are problematic - also, coronation dress refers to the state robes for kings and emperors, not just queens and empresses. Mabalu (talk) 12:17, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Coronation dress, as a topic, does not necessarily apply only to those being crowned. For example, peers of the United Kingdom, and their consorts, wear special dress only at the coronation of their sovereign. The more I think about it the more daunting the topic seems to get right because even for the UK it needs a sound historical understanding of symbols of kingship, knowledge of what was actually done at different periods, and an appreciation of costume history; to extend that globally is a whole other challenge. I am not sure, though, that separating off a topic of 'what queens wear at coronation' makes a great deal of sense out of context unless somebody wants to try. --AJHingston (talk) 14:36, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fashion-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:02, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I see that the article (such as it was) was originally about dress for 'coronation balls or beauty pageants', which like the Moondog Coronation Ball had nothing to do with UK or any other genuine royalty. I see, for example, that there's a Mayor's Coronation Ball which is held annually in Scarborough, Yorkshire, so talk of royalty is missing the point. Whether such balls have any specially remarkable dress seems very doubtful, but at £35 per seat one has to suspect that dress, while smart, will not be anything worth writing an article about. Therefore, Delete seems the correct option, unless we could merge to something like Coronation ball, if any such exists. And by the way, the book about Texan coronation gowns mentioned above is closer to the truth; a few more like that and the topic could even be notable. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:54, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm from me as well. What a thoughtful discussion here and one that I have learned quite a bit from. I think we need a shortish article just summarising the various aspects and also pointing to specific examples. This would link to the more substantial articles. But we don't really seem to have a very good set of articles to link to either. Anyway, if we simply pasted the present AFD discussion into Coronation gown we would improve the article greatly. Thincat (talk) 23:02, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep the discussion at this AfD suggests to me that there is enough material for the article to exist. Clean it up and we should be fine. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:19, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.