Secret message in her shoes

THE day after the news of the wedding dress commission was announced, Elizabeth Emanuel phoned celebrity cobbler Clive Shilton — the darling of fashion magazines in the Seventies for his handmade shoes and handbags — and asked him to come and meet a ‘special client’.

Based in Covent Garden at the time, Clive made the short trip to Brook Street, where Diana was standing on a stool waiting to have her feet measured.

‘She was a very shy, sweet, smiley-eyed young girl,’ he recalls. ‘Her main concern was that she wouldn’t appear taller than Prince Charles, and because she was very tall — 5ft 10in — the shoes would have to have a low heel.’

Clive remains incredibly discreet and refuses to reveal the Princess’s shoe size (thought to be a 6.5). He began by making his own ‘last’ — the wooden mould around which shoes are made — as even this couldn’t be outsourced in case word got out. Though he never saw the dress, the Emanuels sent him the silk they were using, hoping he might be able to make the shoes from the same fabric.

‘It was too fine — it would have crumpled across the instep,’ he says. ‘Instead, the weavers came up with a heavier silk satin.

‘We then covered them in 542 sequins and 132 pearls.’

Clive devised various trims for the front of the shoes and presented them to Diana, who chose a heart-shaped design.

The soles were soft suede so she wouldn’t slip, and the arches were painted with a secret romantic message: the letters ‘C’ and ‘D’, entwined around a heart.

‘ No one even saw the bottom of the shoes, but it was important to us that they looked fantastic,’ says Clive. ‘You would have seen much more of them if she’d tripped!’

From start to finish, it took six months to make the shoes, and every single person in Clive’s workshop, including the cleaner, helped put a tack or a spot of glue on the final pair.

Clive refuses to say how much Diana paid, but admits he charged ‘a basic price’.

Press reports from the time say there was a dispute over the bill, and her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, refused to pay.

No matter, however, as Clive sold one of the spare pairs at auction for £36,000 in 2011.