The original power dresser

Style secrets of the Queen revealed

Power dressers of the world unite – and observe a maestro. The Queen has been grappling with this thorniest of dress dilemmas most of her life, and since her Coronation in 1953, she has, as subsequent power dressers might put it, “owned” it. A number of her trade secrets are revealed in Fashioning a Reign: 90 Years of Style From the Queen’s Wardrobe, an intriguing exhibition of 150 of her outfits that opened at Buckingham Palace yesterday – part of a trilogy of exhibitions examining her style. (One opened in April in Holyrood House in Edinburgh; the other will be coming to Windsor in September.)

The Queen, we are often told, is not much concerned with fashion – although fashion is obsessed with her.

Even at 90, with her silk headscarves and box-pleated woollen skirts, she continues to inspire designers – the latest is Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, who explicitly referenced her in a collection he showed in Westminster Abbey in May.

But as a woman of opinions she cannot voice aloud, she must surely find the language of clothes both interesting, useful and infinitely flexible.

Privately, the clothes she wears are not so different from other upperclass 90-year-olds.

Publicly … well, how many other 90-year-olds bestride the world’s stage?

The calibrations of every outfit the Queen has ever worn in public – the focus of this exhibition – are so finely deliberated they might have been set out by the Foreign Office. There’s the yellow day dress she wore in Australia, a graceful nod to their national colour, and the green gown in Ethiopia, picking out the green of the country’s flag.

There is also the sweet joyousness of the Angela Kelly-designed beaded primrose-coloured wool crepe coat and dress (with silk-rose adorned hat) that she wore to the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011 – on display for the first time.

In part, our fascination with the way the Queen dresses has always rested on her uniqueness. How does one dress for one’s role as head of the Armed Forces? Head of chivalry? Head of the Commonwealth?

The exhibition has examples of all these, as well as the ATS uniform she wore during the Second World War and some of her ball gowns.

Observing her navigate a path between her personal tastes and her sense of duty, as well as analysing her success at remaining relevant across many decades (without resorting to wearing hippie beads in the 1970s or athleisure in 2016), are two of the delights of the exhibition.

In her youth, both Princess Elizabeth and her younger sister clearly enjoyed fashion.

Once Queen, however, she had to develop an image of constancy and gravity that transcended fashion – more subtly than the other Queen Elizabeth, with her white face mask, red wigs and jewel-encrusted farthingales, but no less effectively.

Elizabeth II’s carapaces, like her Tudor namesake’s, include jewelled gowns and vivid hues. Speaking of the latter – she know no fear.

The eye-socking neon green dress she wore on her official birthday earlier this summer was so bright it saw #neonat90 trending on social media.

A sure sign, if one was ever needed, that this is a woman who is extremely savvy about the power of clothes.

Her eye-socking neon green dress saw #neonat90 trending on social media