A royal fashion correspondent has pulled back the curtain on some of Queen Elizabeth II’s most memorable looks.
Plum Sykes, a renowned fashion journalist, took a deep dive into the late queen’s glitzy wardrobe as more than 300 items from her collection are put on display in Buckingham Palace to mark what would have been her centennial year.
The exhibition, dubbed “Her Life in Style,” is on display through October at the King’s Gallery and traces the queen’s life through her most iconic fashion moments. She died at age 96 in 2022.
Her regal wardrobe was largely crafted by Norman Hartnell, a venerated designer for the royal family, Sykes explained.
“He dressed many, many members of the royal family from the late 1920s,” she told her brother, The Royalist Podcast host Tom Sykes.
“Now, what I think is fascinating about Norman Hartnell is he was the child of a publican. His parents lived in Streatham, running a pub. He went to Cambridge. He always loved fashion,” she went on. “He was not from that world, which is maybe why he was able to kind of embrace the fantasy of the princess, kings, queens, and dress them so beautifully. It was very romantic, the way that he dressed them.”
In 1960, Queen Elizabeth II donned a blue ensemble for the wedding of Princess Margaret to Antony Armstrong-Jones. The dress was made in Hartnell’s signature style, pairing a tiny waistline with a huge ball skirt.
“He said to Elizabeth, ‘Why don’t we go for the floor-length gown?’ Because actually, at that time—remember, we’re talking 1960s—everyone else was in mini dresses,” Sykes said. “And he actually kind of brought back long gowns for parties single-handedly by dressing her in this for that wedding.”
Hartnell also pulled out all the stops for the Queen’s wedding to Prince Philip in 1947. The embroidered gown with a sweetheart neckline was crafted in duchess satin and designed to match the bridesmaid dresses, according to Sykes.
“It wasn’t an overt fashion statement. So it was all about style. It was all about the royal family. But it wasn’t going, ‘This is Norman Hartnell’ or ‘This is X designer.’ It was low-key royal chic but full of glamor,” she said.
A third dress—a green number that the Queen wore to a state dinner with Dwight Eisenhower in 1957—was also designed by Hartnell.
“So actually, what’s so interesting is that Hartnell would often alter and repair and remake these gowns for the royal family during the war,” Sykes said. “He would remake them and change them so they could wear them again to a function without making a new dress.”
“She must have worn it there first and then it was changed afterwards, presumably to the more sweetheart neckline. And the other neckline covers the shoulders a bit more, which, in royal circles, showing your shoulders was considered at that time a little bit risque,” she added.
Sykes said her favorite look from the exhibition was a tartan set that Hartnell made for the Queen in the 1950s, which she said likely inspired the likes of Coco Chanel and Christian Dior.
“What I think was so interesting about Hartnell at this time was he was one of the only couturiers who was working in kind of tweeds and wools,” she said. “You can see it from looking at this, is that both Coco Chanel and Christian Dior—those two famous designers who were obviously very, very influential at the time—they looked at what Norman Hartnell was doing in wool and tweed for the royal family, and they were very inspired by it.”
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