Alexandra Shulman’s London Notebook
A palace of intrigue – but the ladies had to stay silent
AT THE start of Queen Elizabeth II’s lying-in-state, to one side of
Westminster Hall was a sober lineup of women of a certain age. Graciously turned out in black, with large hats, they stood solemnly together, all of them wearing strands of pearls around their necks, the same jewel so beloved of the Queen, their mistress. They were, of course, the late Queen’s ladies-in-waiting – the retinue of trusted companions relied upon to accompany her on official events and offer general support.
Ladies-in-waiting is a wonderful term, isn’t it, although it certainly feels anachronistic in this age. Nowadays, women don’t much want to wait on anyone or for anything. Perhaps the term will change if the new queen consort appoints her own female support network shortly. Which is not a given.
For years, Camilla has had her own team around her, in particular Amanda MacManus, who was her loyal private secretary for years – until recently, when she wanted to reclaim a life of her own. But ladies-in-waiting have a different role from Amanda, who was a paid employee.
Ladies-in-waiting have no salary – they do it for the honour. It’s a role that is unlikely to appeal to most women in the contemporary world. Many of us might find it difficult to understand the allure of being a kind of ambulatory cloakroom, always lurking a few steps behind the royal, carrying handbags and flowers and dealing with any blips.
Having to turn up at dawn for a journey to open a hospital on the other side of the country, probably without the benefit of a chauffeurdriven car. And also, crucially, needing to be utterly discreet.
There you are, with a seat at the right hand of the monarch, privy to all the gossip, power plays and the court intrigue. But what can you actually do with that info? Nothing. No dish at all. Your lips must be forever sealed. No Instagram posts, tweets or WhatsApp chat – silence is your currency. And there’s not a huge amount of fun in that.
The hallmark style of the pearly Queen
OVER the past days I have frequently been asked to comment on the late Queen’s influence on fashion, to which I have invariably answered: She had none. The Queen had nothing at all to do with fashion and everything to do with style.
Fashion is always chopping and changing, while the Queen adopted a personal style very early on, which remained the same throughout her life.
She always wore pieces of clothing that we think of as especially British and other nationalities sometimes refer to as ‘le style anglais’ – wools and cashmeres, tweeds, tailoring, waterproof coats and jackets and fabulous evening wear.
We Brits have always done well when it comes to putting on the glitz, and over the years there have been some fantastic British evening-wear designers – the Queen’s Norman Hartnell, for example. But, more recently, Bruce Oldfield, Catherine Walker, Vivienne Westwood, Erdem and Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen have dressed women across the celebrity and royal spectrum.
But the Queen herself was never an influence on them, even if the iconography of royalty might occasionally have been. And they never influenced her.
Looking at the very earliest images of the Queen, you see what is nowadays called her trademark style – the pearl necklaces, the A-line skirts, the soft, chin-length curled bob that never altered. She had the confidence to wear what she felt comfortable in.
Finding your style early on in life and sticking to it is tricky to pull off. If you aren’t the Queen, you might be regarded as stuck in a rut if you are still too relentlessly wedded to the kind of clothes you wore in your 20s, but it’s also the hallmark of real style.
Most of the women who have influenced our style in modern times, such as Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Onassis, Jane Birkin and, most recently, Kate Moss, have in common a core wardrobe – colours and shapes they rarely divert from, even if they are tweaked through the years. The Queen was an exemplar of this and in the last published photograph of her, in the drawing room of Balmoral, there she was wearing the same clothes that we have always associated with her – a beautiful cardigan, plaid skirt, trusty handbag and, of course, those pearls.
Dandy Charles is the king of colour
OUR new king is far more the dandy than his mother was and is known for his immaculate tailoring and love of clothes. He is also fond of his pocket handkerchief, which, over recent days, has provided a vivid display of colours and patterns. Perhaps he will be the one to influence fashion and have a new generation of men adopt this habit.
Now the sexists are picking on Truss
MEANWHILE, early intimations are that all the usual sexist observations will be in place during Liz Truss’s premiership. Only the other day, somebody was remarking on how ill-fitting her dresses were. Boris, of course, was a living vision of sartorial elegance, known around the world for the cut of his suits...
Sorry, but can we stop apologising?
WHEN I heard that the Queen had died, I was on a boat bobbing around the southern Turkish coast with friends. We were all British and if I never hear the word ‘sorry’ again it won’t come a moment too soon. ‘Sorry, but could you pass the toast?’ ‘Sorry, but could I just squeeze past you?’ ‘Sorry, but do you know where my swimming costume might be?’ Of course, we weren’t sorry at all but the apology came on default. No wonder Meghan, who doesn’t appear to be sorry about anything, finds us all so hard to understand.
A fond farewell to the house of fun
ANOTHER loss, of a very different kind, is a house near us in London where we have been attending parties, including one for the wedding of Charles and Diana, for the past 50 years, through several changes of ownership. Now, for the first time, it has been sold to someone we don’t know, so no more parties for us, but hopefully the new owners will continue the trend and be enthusiastic hosts for a whole new set of guests.
However, while there is no direct comparison with the way Cromwell waged his antiroyalist war in England, it should be noted how the English civil war period caused the deaths of about 200,000 people there – around 1 in 25 of the entire population at the time, which, on a per capita basis, is more than England lost in WWI.
The ghost of Cromwell looms large this week with the coronation of King Charles III, because Cromwell and the two previous versions – King Charles, I and II – have, well, history. I’ll have to admit, opposed as I am to the very notion of royalty (fair enough if that’s what the British wish to inflict on themselves), Cromwell’s abolition of the monarchy – and in the most brutal fashion, which included separating King Charles I from his noble head – sets him in a distinctly complimentary light. The pageantry and parading of posh people and aristocrats following the death of the hugely popular Queen Elizabeth is a spectacle cast as an entirely warm and cuddly affair. But, we need to be particularly mindful of the enormously wealthy, elitist, entitled and massively privileged character of the British monarchy, or any monarchy.
The new King
Charles throws a strop over a leaking pen, or misplaced inkwell, while millions of regular people throughout the UK choose between heating and eating as the cost-of-living crisis worsens by the hour.
He won’t pay a red cent in inheritance taxes, despite his billionaire status while his cheering subjects are hung, drawn and quartered until they pay theirs.
And the new King’s brother, Prince Andrew, parades shamelessly in solemn silence and sadness following his mother’s death, despite his disgraceful relationship with convicted sex pervert Jeffrey Epstein and his payment of millions to settle a case taken against him by a woman accusing him of sexual assault and rape as a teenager. Meanwhile, a young man was arrested in Edinburgh for heckling Prince Andrew by shouting at him: ‘Andrew, you’re a sick old man.’
In days like these, dripping with sugary sweetness and stifling sentimentality, we would all do well to remember that monarchy is an unfairness so obvious that it hides in full view. Cromwell, despite all his faults, transferred sovereignty from the king to the people, as expressed through parliament.
Surely he wasn’t all bad?