Just as Queen Mary kept to her long skirts and signature toque hats when young women in the 1920s were chopping off hair and hemlines, the Queen’s wardrobe has stayed constant. Her taste was formed by her mother’s ideas, as Duchess of York, about what Elizabeth and Margaret Rose should wear as they broke bud after their war-time evacuation to Windsor Castle. But whereas her sister was a rebel, Lilibet was dutiful.
‘The Princess was always conservative about her dress, and content to wear whatever was laid before her,’ said Marion Crawford, the family’s governess. Hartnell claimed that Princess Elizabeth accepted fittings as ‘part of her official duties,’ and this passive attitude continued through the long years when Margaret ‘Bobo’ Macdonald, the Queen’s dresser, dealt with designers and suppliers.
Looking back to the formative years in the early 1950s, we can see the seeds of the Queen’s current wardrobe, both public and private: the smart coats and soft dresses, the spreading ball gowns below a neat waist and the knits and kilts worn today in the country.
‘Sensible interchangeable outfits… such as a wool three-piece of skirt, jacket and princess-style coat’ reported the Daily Mail approvingly when the two Princesses accompanied their parents to South Africa in 1947.
Colours
Yet even then Princess Elizabeth had developed a penchant for the bright colours that she still favours over the Queen Mother’s pastels. She chose then from Hartnell a lime-green ball gown, just as today she will pick canary yellow. Royalty, she believes, has a duty to be seen in a crowd and that was proven by the all-yellow outfit by Amies she wore at a gathering of dark-clad students in Portugal in 1985.
Her wardrobe is similar to that of 40 years ago, partly because her life still follows the traditional aristocratic progress between seasons, places and social events. Every year, the royal calendar kicks off in October when the Queen returns from Balmoral and begins a round of duties in the smart suits and coats that are appropriate rather than showy.
