Elaborate collars sparked a trend
TRADITIONAL and English, yet something only a pretty, young girl could get away with, the look-at-me collar inspired all the big Chelsea fashion houses — David and Elizabeth Emanuel, Bellville Sassoon and Dutch designer Jan Vanvelden.
Each designed ever more exaggerated white trimmings on everything from tops to gowns.
Diana ordered a frilly-edged chiffon blouse for underneath her going-away suit and picked out a pie-crust blouse for a portrait with Prince Charles that was made into a commemorative stamp.
Vanvelden took the whole thing to its most elaborate conclusion, framing Diana’s face with bright white, jagged-edged Puritan collars, which she loved.
There she is during what Charles famously called ‘the crawlabout’ — a photo shoot for baby William on the lawn of Government House in Auckland on the couple’s tour of 1983 — in a calf-length green and whitespotted dress, a huge yoke-like Van Dyke collar framing her face (top left).
The same collar was deployed to spectacular effect over a red dress in Canada later that same year (above).
The trend snowballed from Palace to High Street from 1980 to 1984. Her collars became a national style, symbolic of all that was great about Britishness.
While Margaret Thatcher was ruling Britannia in her pussy-bow blouses, Diana was abroad melting hearts in her fairy-tale pie-crusts, generating the kind of business the High Street at home prayed for.