majesty; What transpires when three artistic rulers join forces.

Byline: Sally Singer

"When you walk into the studio, your blood slows. I understood the rich, full meaning of still life." It's rare for a flesh-and-blood Hollywood beauty to compare herself to a bowl of fruit, but then again, it's rare that anyone has the privilege of submitting to the matchless photographic gaze of Irving Penn. When Cate Blanchett sat (or, rather, "stood against a pole") for Penn one morning this spring-the morning of the Costume Institute gala at the Met, for which cochair Blanchett had flown into New York-she was "daunted by the knowledge of who he's photographed-Le Clercq and Dietrich and O'Keeffe." An irony, this, because the actress was once again assuming the guise of Queen Elizabeth I, perhaps the most daunting female in history, in The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur's fall follow-up to Elizabeth, his stunning biopic of 1998.

So memorable was Blanchett's performance in her first outing as the monarch that when Penn was considering her as a subject for his lens (yes, even a queen is a subject in his realm), he sketched a silhouette resembling the extraordinary costume that served as a visual conclusion to the movie: the spectacularly collared and corseted dress in which the Virgin Queen formally wed God and England. The drawing was sent to Nicolas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga with the commission of making something old and something new. Once he'd recovered from the usual shock and awe of being asked to work with Penn ("It was the feeling of being ...