Bethan Holt - The Queen: 70 years of Majestic Style

THE QUEEN

THE QUEEN

70 YEARS OF MAJESTIC STYLE

BETHAN HOLT

Senior designer Toni Kay

Senior commissioning editor Annabel Morgan

Head of production Patricia Harrington

Art director Leslie Harrington

Publisher Cindy Richards

First published in 2022 by

Ryland Peters & Small

2021 Jockeys Fields,

London WC1R 4BW

and

341 East 116th Street

New York, NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

Text copyright Bethan Holt 2022

Design copyright Ryland Peters & Small 2022

Photographs copyright Getty Images

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN: 978-1-78879-427-5

eISBN: 978-1-78879-460-2

The authors moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress CIP data has been applied for.

Printed and bound in China

CONTENTS

Her Majesty wearing her classic brooch and triple-strand pearl necklace on a visit to Sweden, June 1956.

Queen Elizabeth ll at Sandringham with her corgies, 1960s.

INTRODUCTION

T he importance of the Queens faultlessly appropriate style was crystallized within hours of her accession to the throne. Having flown back from a trip to Kenya in the wake of her fathers death, the 25-year-old new sovereign waited inside the aircraft on the runway at London Airport while a black outfit was brought for her to change into before she was photographed for the first time as Queen Elizabeth II. Pinned to her left lapel as she descended the steps of the plane was her flame lily brooch, given to her during a tour to southern Africa with her parents and sister five years before a small detail representing happy memories at a time of tragedy.

It is in this impeccable, considered vein that Her Majesty has continued for the last 70 years, the longest reign of any British monarch. The second Elizabethan age has seen the way women dress change almost beyond recognition in the early 1950s, they rarely left the house without a hat and gloves, whereas now leisurewear and trainers can be the height of fashion. Trends for miniskirts, boob tubes, flares and power shoulders have come, gone, come back and gone again. The way fashion is consumed has changed, too, from genteel salon shows and homemade dresses to social media spectacles and shopping at the tap of a mobile phone screen.

Through it all, Elizabeth IIs style has been an extension of all she represents as Queen; it is stoical and cautious yet dazzling and majestic. Five days after she ascended the throne, Prime Minister Winston Churchill called her a fair and youthful figure the heir to all our traditions and glories. It is testament to her success that, in her nineties, she is as revered for her singular style as she was adored for her beauty and youth in her twenties. No matter what is happening in the world, we can be sure that Elizabeth II will be there in her vibrant coat, her heirloom brooches and carrying her sturdy Launer handbag.

In 2016, in the year of her 90th birthday, the Queen received a special citation in Vanity Fair magazines International Best-Dressed List. She has consistently represented who she is and what she stands for, without wavering from a standard she set a long time ago, said Amy Fine Collins, the lists gatekeeper. Politics, culture, and class structure in the empire all of that shifts constantly, but she doesnt. Shes a beacon.

In the past seven decades, its estimated that Elizabeth II has worn more than 10,000 outfits, honing a clothing strategy that can see her semaphore respect, diplomatic flattery, elegance, gratitude, regal glamour and much more with what she chooses to wear.

At a polo match at Windsor Great Park, June 1976.

And its important to stress that choice she is no star powered by an overbearing stylist. The Queen has a fantastic understanding of clothes and fashion, and is very aware of what suits her and what would be appropriate for the occasion, her current dresser Angela Kelly has said. Hardy Amies, who designed for the Queen from the 1950s until the 1990s, emphasized that, I do not dress the Queen. The Queen dresses herself. We supply her with clothes there is a difference.

Rather than dismissing clothing as frivolous, Her Majesty knows just how much appearance counts. The Queen has a mind of her own. Just as she fell in love as a teenager and made a clear choice about who she wanted to marry, so she has decided how she should look, says Justine Picardie, the author of Miss Dior and former editor-in-chief of Harpers Bazaar.

The Queens image may be indisputably iconic now, but it is a style evolution that has not been without its challenges. The way she is seen by her subjects has been revolutionized from the black and white newsreels of post-war Britain and a generally deferential media to the technicolour 24/7 online news cycle that now exists, fuelled by tabloid outlets and technology that flashes an image or news line around the globe in seconds.

The Queen must always present a perfect figure at all times quite a high standard for any fabric and design to achieve, Angela Kelly has said a philosophy that she has evidently always sought to uphold but which must have extra urgency in todays media landscape.

Elizabeth II has grown from beautiful young woman to nonagenarian before the worlds eyes, becoming a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, and facing both joy and tragedy under that microscopic gaze. Reviews have not always been as glowing or respectful as they tend to be today, when most of us are in awe of the Queens continuing dedication to duty.

One of her favoured designers, Ian Thomas, said that the Queen once told me shes no model girl and she doesnt want clothes to pose in, yet it must have been some ignominy to be accused of looking dowdy and tired with visible veins on her legs, as she was on one visit to Canada in her middle age. Who knows how Her Majesty took such criticism in private, but in public she has always seemed as keen to simply get on with the job when shes at her lowest publicity ebb as when shes at her most adored.