Designers of Diana’s dress lend sparkle to The Crown
THE designers of the wedding dress worn by Diana, Princess of Wales, helped to create a replica for the new series of The Crown by supplying their original patterns.
Netflix invited David and Elizabeth Emanuel to work with them on a replica of the fairytale gown.
The 1981 wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer will be the centrepiece of the new series, which begins in November.
Emma Corrin, who plays the Princess, told Vogue magazine: “The Emanuels, who designed the original, gave us the patterns, and then it was made for me. We were filming the scene where you first see her in the wedding dress – I think it was Lancaster House in London – and I had a team of about 10 people helping me put it on, because it’s massive.
“I walked out and everyone went completely silent. More than anything else I wear in the series, it’s so … her.”
The young actress, a virtual unknown to television, was born in 1995 – two years before the Princess’s death.
However, she said that taking on the role had made her feel close to her subject. “I feel I’ve got to know Diana like you would a friend. I know that sounds really weird, but I get a great sense of companionship from her,” she said.
The original wedding gown, made from ivory silk taffeta, featured a 25ft train and was hand-embroidered with 10,000 pearls. Netflix reportedly employed a team of up to 20 seamstresses to recreate the dress, with David Emanuel on set to act as a consultant.
The train of the original dress was so big that, when the Princess emerged from her carriage at St Paul’s Cathedral, it was noticeably crumpled.
Elizabeth Emanuel later recalled: “I remember whispering to David, ‘Oh my God, it’s creased.’” But she added: “When she came out of that carriage, it was the most wonderful vision I’d ever seen. Oddly, the imperfections seemed to make her even more beautiful.”
Security surrounding the Netflix series is so tight that Corrin was sworn to secrecy after landing the role.
“I didn’t tell anyone for a while,” she said. “I love my mates but I think it would have got out.” However, some eventually guessed and made her a scrapbook of her route to stardom including a screenshot from “a random conversation we’d had four years ago when I said, ‘Isn’t Diana amazing!’”
Corrin won the role after the producers reportedly put out a casting call for an actress able to play charming and flirtatious but also a “desperate and lonely self-harmer at her lowest ebb and the kind of psychological intensity of Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby”.
Photographs from the set of The Crown show that costume designers have recreated several of the Princess’s famous looks.
‘I walked out and everyone went completely silent. More than anything else I wear in the series, it’s so … her’