Her Majesty proved that simple lines, soft tailoring and a good shoulder line can be priceless
We’ve become so used, in recent months, to dazzling images of the late Queen in her delightfully bright coats and dresses and the beguiling wasp-waisted dresses of her youth, that it’s easy to forget there was a period in the middle when she seemed to have mislaid her sartorial playfulness and love of clothes.
You might assume The Crown’s wardrobe department are laying on the Royal Dowdiness with a trowel, especially since they so clearly seem to be on Team Diana. But even if the late Queen had wanted to compete with her increasingly charismatic daughter-in-law – and there is zero indication that, in real life, she did – there simply weren’t the wardrobe tools with which to do it in the 1990s without looking like mutton. Back then, in the UK at least, by the time they were in their seventh decade most women, even those in jobs where age should denote gravitas, had become invisible to the media.
At 50, the average woman had checked out of fashion, and her style had become frozen. Today’s midlifers, with their myriad, constantly tweaked style choices, were another 30 years off. Even in the US the options were narrow. In the 80s, to be sure, there had been Nancy Reagan in her sharp Galanos dresses, but she was considered too brittle, too thin and almost laughably grand to be any kind of British role model.
Besides, the late Queen didn’t do role models. She was unique. Style-wise, she constantly had to forge her own way. Ingenue for the early years was charming and appropriate. But as she gained ever more influence and status, she must have sometimes wondered where the clothes were that would do justice to her position. Power-dressing, as commandeered so successfully by Margaret Thatcher, clearly wasn’t the answer. But what was?