THE QUEEN OF STYLE
Elizabeth on Elizabeth: In this excerpt, a fashion journalist explores why appearances are everything
I HAVE TO BE SEEN TO BE believed,” Queen Elizabeth II famously once said. She was right: the Queen serves as Head of State, a lofty title for a largely symbolic position. As a constitutional monarch, she cannot make or pass legislation (that’s up to Parliament) nor does she take a political stance. Her power is in her public presence, a series of highly choreographed appearances. At home, she is the steady hand of the nation; on tour, she is a glittering ambassador to promote its economic and strategic interests abroad. The National Portrait Gallery deemed the Queen “the most portrayed individual in history,” associated with more than 950 portraits. She was crowned in the first televised coronation in 1953, which brought her into her subjects’ homes. And she has been there ever since, her image plastered on teacups and reimagined on bobblehead dolls. In her role, the Queen is said to care not about fashion but about clothes, and the power they hold. She was born into royalty and dressed for display from an early age, and she has carried those lessons with her throughout her long life. She dresses with an eye toward what is appropriate, rather than what silhouette is in vogue. “More than anybody in the world, she dresses according to occasion, duty, hosts, guests, custom, formality,” said Sali Hughes, a Welsh journalist and author of the book Our Rainbow Queen.
The Queen’s annual calendar serves up the same
first public outing with Harry in Toronto in 2017 at the Invictus Games (wearing Misha Nonoo’s foreshadowing husband shirt with unroyal ripped jeans) and her last at the Commonwealth Service ceremony in March, when she wore that show-stopping Emilia Wickstead emerald green ensemble. “Those last three dresses, Meghan nailed it, they were everything you’d want from royal fashion,” says Holmes, looking back at the theatrical jewel-toned trio of outfits Meghan wore in her final days as a royal. Holmes tells Zoomer it was surreal to be writing her book in real time at that overheated moment. Those three short Meghan years included her dressing around a wedding, a baby and a couple of big royal tours. Holmes says now: “What I see is someone who tried really hard as a royal.” Meghan, she says, understood already how to mix her personal style into new situations. “She was a grown, accomplished woman, she knew the language of clothing, from costume design on set to the red carpet, and she jumped into it all immediately.”
MEGHAN WORKED HARD, too, writes Holmes in the book, to use her clothing choices to amplify the work of female, BIPOC and trans designers and to highlight sustainability. Kate, for her part, beyond the pro-Britannia bent, is a steadfast purveyor of diplomatic dressing, or clothing that directly pays tribute to her hosts. Both Kate and Meghan used their post-partum photo ops to help normalize how women don’t just “bounce back” after childbirth by wearing frocks that deliberately did not hide the still-present baby bellies after delivery. Kate took her baby-reveal photo ops on the steps of the Lindo Wing even further, paying silent homage twice to her mother-in-law by wearing a blue polka-dot number for George to echo Diana’s choice for William’s debut and a red number for Louis to echo Diana’s dress for Harry’s first flashbulbs.
The throngs of global press that descend upon the steps of the Lindo Wing upon every Windsor birth prove that royal women are a pastime as big as football for fashion fans. The textured details about their clothing help fill in the blanks and add some meat to their stories. Sometimes they serve up fantasy, other times relatability, and then there are sly comments on the soap opera going on behind the scenes of their duty-bound public appearances. But no one is likely to be as clever at the game as Diana, calling out herself as the black sheep of the family without saying a word. series of engagements year after year — the royal equivalent of lather, rinse, repeat — in a mix that is formal and fun. She is at her grandest for the State Opening of Parliament, making her way down the aisle in a fur-trimmed velvet cape so heavy it requires several young boys to carry it. Every June, she peacocks with panache at Royal Ascot. For the five-day series of horse races, the Queen wears her brightest, boldest daytime fashion of the year. The bookies take bets on what color her hat will be.
Looking the part of a queen requires, as one would expect, some sparkle. When the occasion calls for it, she is very willing to pile on the bling. We’re talking a tiara with chunky earrings, a statement necklace, and a brooch with a few bracelets, too. It’s following the belief put forth by her ancestors that a visual display of wealth conveys the monarch’s power and in influence. Jewels are much more fun when worn, after all. (Elizabeth’s grandmother, Queen Mary, wore a tiara to dinner every night.) During a tour of Southern Africa while their father was king, sisters Elizabeth and Margaret would disembark the royal train in dressing gowns and jewels to show locals their finery.
And yet, as fancy as she can be, the Queen is also immensely frugal. New jewelry has often been made using stones taken from other, more dated pieces. She repeated her coronation gown six times after its debut (six!), in part to show it off to the world, but also one has to guess that meant no need for six other gowns.
These days the Queen’s wardrobe is handled by a team that includes five dressers, a dressmaker, and a milliner. It is an immense logistical undertaking with looks planned far in advance and record
ed in a spreadsheet to ensure repeats are properly spaced. It is, nearly always, the same combination of shapes in a rotating rainbow of shades. “There’s absolutely nothing modern about the way she dresses,” said Robin Givhan, fashion critic at the Washington Post. But that’s the point. The Queen is a living monument, a symbol of consistency and reassurance. Can you imagine the alternative, if she were uttering about in designs from one couture house to the next? What if she wore whatever style was trending? As Givhan put it: “It would be unnerving.”
From HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style by Elizabeth Holmes. Copyright (c) 2020 by the author and reprinted by permission of Celadon Books, a division of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC