The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
FINDING HER SIGNATURE LOOK
The Queen epitomised 1950s fashion with her nipped-in waists and full, demure, below-the-knee skirts but towards the end of the decade, fashion transformed in a way that would have been difficult for the monarch, now in her mid-30s, to embrace. The mini Youthquake look sweeping Carnaby Street and the King’s Road was not coming to Buckingham Palace – but another style shift was.
Elizabeth swapped that feminine ’50s silhouette for styles that chimed subtly with the new ’60s look – her skirts were a little shorter, her jackets and coats became boxier and, most importantly, she took to wearing one pop of colour headto-toe for the first time – the signature look for which she is known and loved today.
But some accused the Queen of not adapting quickly enough as the sparkle of youth faded. She sometimes looked ‘dowdy, unfashionable and downright ugly’, according to the author Michael Pick, who wrote the biographies of her two favourite designers, Hartnell and Amies.
When the Queen hosted President Kennedy and his fashion icon wife Jackie at Buckingham Palace, she wore a frou-frou crinoline gown that looked old-fashioned next to the First Lady’s sleek Givenchyesque dress – Mrs Kennedy later told Cecil Beaton that she was unimpressed by the sovereign’s style, although that tulle dress wouldn’t look out of place on catwalks today.
And indeed, Her Majesty’s preference for timeless elegance over flash-in-the-pan trends truly came into its own in this era. Some of her chicest outfits were seen in the ’60s, from the beautiful loose lilac duster coat she wore in Rome in 1961 to the strikingly simple pale-yellow outfit (complete with intricately embroidered medieval-style hat) she chose for the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales.
It was in this decade that Her Majesty found her forever look.