Queen Elizabeth II covers the April issue of British Vogue. British Vogue actually did two covers for the April issue, one of QEII and one with Anya Taylor-Joy. Obviously, QEII didn’t actually sit down for a British Vogue photoshoot, although I would not have minded if she did. Vogue is celebrating the Platinum Jubbly, obviously, so they used an old photo of Liz, and the magazine has done an editorial of rarely-seen images of the Queen, plus they published an essay about her style. This is actually the Queen’s first time on the cover of British Vogue, a fact I find bewildering. The magazine seriously never put her on their cover before now? What a crazy oversight. Anyway, I enjoyed the essay about her style and there’s some interesting stuff about Angela Kelly – the Queen’s dresser and BFF – and how the Queen has actually always enjoyed fashion and fabrics. Some highlights:
The intro lays it on thick: Imagine never getting it wrong. Ever. Stylistically, every day of your life, nailing it. Never feeling overdressed, underdressed or otherwise just wrongly dressed. Queen Elizabeth II’s style choices are, and have always been, faultless. Always correct, composed and confident, and though it may look relatively straightforward in terms of shape and silhouette, her attire never fails to convey a message of optimism, diplomacy, hope and stability.
The Queen’s trade secrets: Weights are discreetly sewn into hemlines if more than a gentle breeze is forecasted, any heavily beaded dresses will often have extra lining at the back for cushioning (dense embroideries are uncomfortable to sit in) and while the choice of fabric must always be regal, suitable for the occasion, climate and the time of the year, perhaps most importantly it must be immune to creasing. Every fabric is rigorously twisted before purchase to check it can withstand wrinkles.
The Queen hoards fabric for decades: Fabrics that make the grade are collected and cherished over the years and stored in a stockroom on the Dressers’ Floor at Buckingham Palace, which Kelly regularly revisits for inspiration. The golden dress worn at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert 10 years ago – and inspired by the golden figure on top of the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of the Palace – was made from a fabric purchased in 1961. Other fabrics have been stored here since Her Majesty was a princess. It’s ironic that some of the world’s best designers have only in recent seasons discovered “deadstock” in their drive to claim greater sustainability credentials, but this kind of thriftiness and approach to style has long defined the Queen.
The Queen loves silk from Singapore: Before clothes are made, the Queen approves every sketch and fabric sample. She has a keen interest in fabrics, in particular a fondness for Singaporean silk. It’s understood that during visits to Singapore, local tradespeople will bring their wares to the airport for her arrival. The Queen will browse and make her selection and purchases will be collected on the return home. Said to be incredibly decisive, Her Majesty rarely changes her mind about an outfit that she has previously agreed to. The monarch even does her own make-up every day and for every event (the filming of the Queen’s Christmas message is the only exception).
The Queen loves to recycle: “Her Majesty is always thrifty and likes her clothes to be adapted and recycled as much as possible,” writes Kelly. “Typically, the lifespan of an outfit can be up to around 25 years.” After two or three public appearances, designs are altered or they become relegated to off-duty wear. Much like most of us, in fact, in the way that something will often start off as “for best” before it gradually loses desirability as it clocks up years and wear; unlike most of us, though, I imagine it’s harder to lay claim to never getting it wrong.
I actually think the clothes the Queen wore when she was younger were really nice, especially for the time. The attention to detail, the way she had everything tailored for her large bust and small frame, so many of those pieces hold up. The Crown shows what she dressed like in those early years too – simple cashmere sweater sets, below-the-knee tweed skirts, that kind of thing. When she got past 50 years old or so, that’s when she really got into bright coats and the matching hats. Personally, I don’t always like that stuff. Even before her health problems, I felt like that style often veered into something cartoonish, something too garish, and there were times when she looked like the Mad Hatter.
Cover & IG courtesy of British Vogue, additional photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red and Instagram.
-
- The 60th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh on 21st Nov 2007 Coverage of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip London, England – 21.11.1947,Image: 329738240, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no
-
- ‘DEVIL DANCERS’ ENTERTAIN THE QUEEN – The Queen and Prince Philip watched a display of ‘devil dancing’ during a Durbar at Po on the second day of their tour of the interior of Sierra Leone. Seen here sharing a hearty joke with the Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, Sir MILTON MARGAI during the Durbar – Date: 29.11.1961. Ref: B39_085132_0003 . COMPULSORY CREDIT: Bandphoto /UPPA/Photoshot,Image: 502743268, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: For queries call UPPA + 44 (0)20 7421 6000, Model Release: yes, Credit line: © Bandphoto / uppa.co.uk / Avalon
-
- Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II (C) reacts as she attends the State Opening of Parliament in the Houses of Parliament in London on October 14, 2019. – The State Opening of Parliament is where Queen Elizabeth II performs her ceremonial duty of informing parliament about the government’s agenda for the coming year in a Queen’s Speech.,Image: 539313796, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: NO UK USE FOR SEVEN DAYS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251, Model Release: no, Credit line: – / Avalon
-
- (200310) — LONDON, March 10, 2020 () — British Queen Elizabeth II leaves Westminster Abbey after attending the annual Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey on Commonwealth Day in London, Britain, March 9, 2020. (Photo by Ray Tang/),Image: 563914281, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS excluding China – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251, Model Release: no, Credit line: Han Yan / Avalon
-
- Her Majesty the Queen during her visit to the Royal Australian Air Force Memorial, at Runnymede.31/3/2021,Image: 602530052, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: NO UK USE FOR 48 HOURS- Fee Payable Upon reproduction – For queries contact Avalon sales@Avalon.red London +44 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles +1 310 822 0419 Berlin +49 30 76 212 251 Madrid +34 91 533 42 89, Model Release: no, Credit line: Avalon.red / Avalon
-
- Queen Elizabeth II during the State Opening of Parliament in the House of Lords at the Palace of Westminster in London.
I think I find more worrying the timing of “why now?” instead of why they haven’t done that before.
I’m becoming sort of French revolutionary woman, not ‘off with their heads’ sort of thing, but after their treatment of H&M I’ve become a full on republicanist. Royal Scroungers, the whole lot of them.
Completely agree!
I have gone full on republicanist too in the last few years – I think the treatment of h&m exacerbated feelings that were on their way regardless
@AlpineWitch You just read my mind.
Okay I bet that storeroom of fabric is amazing to browse through and see everything that’s there.
I think the queen does dress nicely, and when she was younger she had a nice sense of style (but now every outfit is the same – floral dress, solid topper, and a brooch and a hat that matches the topper and dress. Long white glittery dress for formal occasions.) But I guess at 96 having a uniform of sorts makes sense.
but I am laughing at the part about her always being dressed impeccably, never underdressed or overdressed – of course not. she’s the queen. the way she dressed set the standard and the “vibe” for the event. If its a black tie affair and she walks in in a cocktail dress, now its no longer a black tie affair and everyone else is overdressed.
I was thinking exactly the same at your last comment, she sets the tone of the occasion so of course she is always on point.
I like reading about the planning details, how they test the fabric for wrinkles, etc. So interesting to me what goes into picking out an outfit!
Oh, I’ve done that in stores for the longest time, my mom taught me that. Gather up a handful of fabrics & scrunch it up; if it wrinkles, you don’t want it. Unless wrinkles don’t both you, of course. Or you don’t mind ironing.
Right? QEII is the embodiment of “the party don’t start ‘til I walk in.”
The last paragraph is spot on. I bet she is never late to dinner and always finishes when everyone else is done. Because, as it’s been stated, when she is done with dinner – everyone else is too. She sets the tone.
I would love to look at all the fabric and jewels. Oh my. I get lite headed thinking about it. And your own seamstress. Such a waste this will one day all go to Kate.
Not stopping my meal when she is finished with hers is why I won’t be invited to dine with her. Lol. As if I am even on her radar.lol
I picture people shoveling it in or raiding the kitchen late at night.
I share those sentiments. All the potential of those fabrics wasted because we know Kate, for all her cosplay, won’t appreciate what she has there. These were my same thoughts when she went to the Faberge exhibit: an Art History major with no sense of Art nor History.
When the people rise up and sack the RF, I’m going to do whatever I can to liberate that fabric stash. You know, in case anyone gets a notion to start setting fires. The fabric must be saved!!!!!!
I got you, Laura-Lee 😂😂😂😂
you get the fabric ill get the jewelry 😍
@Becks1, I was thinking the same thing about cruising through that storeroom of fabric! My god, what a treasure trove. Maybe not up there with the Crown Jewels at the Tower, but like Aladdin’s cave! 😍
That fabric comment was the most fascinating part of this article to me. What I wouldn’t give to go explore through, not only the rows of fabrics, but all of the queen’s clothes. I bet it’s all color coordinated and like a mile of rainbows. What fun that would be.
Queen Jenner and her trash family should just Go Away!
@CherriePie83 l share your sentiment. Abolish the monarchy!!!
How royal wardrobes are managed is definitely something I’d love to know more about. For example: where are all the clothes stored? Not just for the queen but Camilla, Anne, Sophie, Kate etc etc. And is everything logged and tagged? How are the clothes decided? So many questions!
Sofia, I am obsessed with the fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent each year on tissue paper, temperature, staff, all on preserving Keen Katie’s collection of fast fashion high street buys from 15 years ago, all so once every 4 months she can again wear a single piece and get called thrifty. I would also kill to read about same.
Does anyone else see Harry in the colour Vogue cover of Brenda? It only just struck me how alike they look.
AMG I notice that too!
Wow, yes!
@Andrew’s_Nemesis – that was my first thought. It’s Harry’s face. Never understand why people think James Hewitt is his real dad. Pics of a toddler Prince Charles has strong Archie vibes.
Sorry but hoarding stuff you don’t use for years is not thrifty. Wearing something 2 or 3 times is not thrifty. If it’s really necessary for her to not repeat wear things, why not donate to charity for sell or someone to use?
Because that family isn’t about the giving, they are about the taking and grifting
Honestly, they should have a yearly auction and donate the proceeds.
Agree that buying fabric and only using it 30 years later isn’t thrifty, but taking an outfit and altering it so it can be worn again in a new style is a sort of recycling and it sounds like she may do quite a bit of that.
Well, then I guess I’m not thrifty. My yarn stash is enormous and spans decades. I console myself by saying “It’s not cheese; it won’t go bad,” and I do use it, especially during the past 2 years of covid lockdown. And I suppose I don’t need quite so many books…
Ah yes as a fellow knitter I also suffer from SABLE: Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy.
But I really would love to check out the fabric room, that sounds amazing.
But you earn your own money and pay for it yourself instead of gaslighting others to believe they are supplying it because you are “thrifty”.
Yeah, I rolled my eyes hard at that part. Spending thousands on a piece of clothing or a handbag and only using it a few times is not ‘thrifty’.
Good luck to the idea that the sovereign will share their clothes! I don’t think even the Scandinavians or the Dutch ones will stoop to that. Sharing clothes with the monarch is definitely a step to far for demystying the monarchy.
The Scandinavian royals do share the clothes with the family, though. Victoria has been seen with several of her mothers old outfits. The younger princesses of Norway and Denmark raids their mothers closets and Swedens princess Estelle have been observed in her mums old childrens clothes as well as princess Ingrid Alexandras.
But has the queen in her never gets it wrong wisdom, passed on the sow weights into your skirts mantra to duchess let it all blow up Middleton?
Now we know why kate looks up to her!
All i got from this article was clothes, clothes, clothes. Nothing about what service she has done for people in are “Platinum Years”
Rumors are Kate was advised but chose to ignore. I guess she finally grew up in her late 30s. I noticed her hemlines are much longer now.
I think she was read the riot act by TQ, William and Charles to stop the exhibitionist nonsense she was famous for as a uni student. We’ve all seen Kate’s private bits far too much and one has to think it was deliberate — getting off a plane on a windy tarmac wearing a flimsy dress and barely there butt floss? How regal. Now it’s sister-wife dresses or buttoned-down coatdresses.
She stopped wearing those when Meghan came onboard. My speculation is her mom told her to stop wearing such dresses because another exposure would make her look like the uncouth Duchess next to Meghan.
She was still pulling stunts with flyaway dresses on tour at the memorial in India. I agree it only stopped when Meghan arrived, although even then she Almost had an incident at Eugenie’s wedding and there is a photo of Sophie giving kate a look as she holds down her dress.
Wow, she’s really coming into her own! Never puts a foot wrong! I’m being a little snarky here I know…
Giving Angela Kelly a platform?
Edward Enninful continues to be a huge disappointment.
Enninful does not have free rein in his position. He does not own British Vogue. It’s either compromise with and glorify the powers-that-be, or quit his job and the prestige, etc., that come with it.
I don’t think she’s much of a dresser these days but she was fashionable in her prime.
IMHO, when the queen was young she was quite glamorous, in middle age she was frumpy and as a senior quite colorful and cheerful. I wish she had been a little more glamorous in middle age but I think she is spot on for her senior years.
When she was younger, she was very pretty and glamorous, but I always thought she hit middle age (as far as how she dressed) fairly early. Part of that, I think, is because her looks and style just fit the fashions of the 1940s and 50s. But by the time the 1960s rolled around, she was in her mid 30s and her inner frump started to show. She seemed stuck in a past decade for quite a few years. The transition to the contemporary fashion of the 60s didn’t go well for her, and the 1970s was just a stylistic mess for Betty. It didn’t help, of course, that in those days, ‘older’ women were expected to dress their age.
Great observations and commentary @TigerMcQueen. Kinda reminds me of The Crown with the lovely Claire Foy and her camera-loving luminescence vs frumpy, middle-aged Olivia Colman who does NOT have a face the camera loves! It was too abrupt of a casting transition for the mid-to late sixties when only a few years had supposedly passed between season 2 and season 3!
Tobias Menzies taking over for Matt Smith, was not quite as jarring. I really wish the producers had spent more time with Foy and Smith portraying the immediate aftermath of Elizabeth’s and Philip’s late 1950s early 1960s marriage reconciliation.
Overbred parasites. But I will say this. That woman knows how to do a good portrait photo. Kate, take notes.
“Every fabric is rigorously twisted before purchase to check it can withstand wrinkles.”
Will someone please forward this advice to William? His suit fabrics look cheap & wrinkled so much of the time.
I’m Singaporean and I have no idea what is Singaporean silk. We did trade a lot of stuff including silk.
There’s a whole Dressers floor?! What I would give to have a peek at that! I’m sure many of us know a thing or two about hoarding fabric and notions 😂 🙋
Really weird that no one at Vogue seems to notice that there’s a difference between beading and embroidery.
Good catch! A beaded dress would be difficult to sit on or lean back in, but not an embroiled dress.
I think she’s consistently gotten it wrong with dresses throughout her whole reign. Her coat game became strong later in life but just one look at the Queen standing next to Jackie Kennedy tells you who gets fashion and fabrics right and who does not. Philip in his prime had his fashion down pat though.
When I look at the Betty/Jackie photos from that dinner, I see one woman stuck in the earlier decade and one who’d moved into the 1960s. Betty has always clung hard to the past.
There was a whole scene in “The Crown” about that photo.
The queen was really a looker in her younger days and had Norman Hartnell design and create her clothing back then. I do get a chuckle over a mini fabric bazaar erected at the Singapore airport for the queen to browse through.
And she had Cecil Beaton available to take her portraits.
It takes incomprehensible wealth to have the resources available to you to buy fabric like that, store in properly, and have your own dressmakers available to you to rework all of your clothing. The only people to whom this can seem thrifty is Imelda Marcos.
Yes it does!
I once visited the Wardrobe Museum of one of the erstwhile Nizams of Hyderabad…who were stupendously wealthy in their heyday. The ‘wardrobe’ was over 160 feet long, and at least 2 stories high, lined with individual armoires of Burma teak. There aren’t any fabrics left now, but the guide showed us the upper racks which held huge bolts of fabric. So that no one else would appear in the same clothes the Nizam wore, the entire bolt was purchased and kept. Or so the guide said.
The BRF might want to take note of the end of the storied Nizam family (they could teach a master class in the rise and fall of aristo wealth). Another thing they were known for was their love and appreciation of pearls…there was a pearl-washing day in the palace where quantities of pearls would be washed and dried on the roof!
They also did a great deal for the citizens of Hyderabad…planted trees, established hospitals, schools and colleges and patronized music, food and culture. Their polish and courtesy are still referred to today.
Can’t say the same of the boorish BRF though.
https://www.tcrc.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Article_5_TG.pdf
Thanks for the link! Wowzers! I hope to visit someday!
The Queen on the cover of a magazine?! The horror!! How unroyal!
Love that cover and all of the old photos.
Back then, it was called “airbrushing” (for folks who wonder how Elizabeth could look so good prior to Photoshop).
But I disagree with the criticism of her hat-wearing. To me, Elizabeth (and also Anne) knows how to wear a hat. She doesn’t plaster them to the side of her head as if she doesn’t know how hats work (Kate and Sophie, I’m looking in your direction).
Is Lizzy a redhead too?? 2nd pic
Great photos, etc., etc., but puhleaze-enough with the queen being thrifty! She is NOT thirty! Two or three wears for something, then it’s altered or put into everyday use? Considering the number of engagements she’s always done, there’s no way on earth her clothes get a proper wearing or ever, ever wear out. What a load of bollocks. Ditto for never getting anything wrong. It’s just exponentially sycophantic. How can they write such drivel? Or attach their names to it?
Do her eyes point in two different directions?
Not mad at Vogue for this feature, a lot of people are interested in the “logistics” behind the curtain as much as the characters (I couldn’t care less about being a fly on the wall for Will’s raging but am fascinated about the amount of work/resources that go into wardrobe planning).
That being said, the accompanying cover of Anya Taylor Joy is mountains better than these tired images!
The fabric information and details are very interesting and I’d also love a chance to browse the stores.
But I don’t see how any of it should be seen as complimentary to the queen. People in England (and the rest of the world, in varying degrees) are struggling to put food on the table, pay for housing, and fuel their cars with the rising costs of living.
Celebrating the queen’s fabric collection and acknowledging all of the resources that have gone into creating it and preserving it irks me. It’s so privileged and out of touch. Showing off one of the many ways they use the money siphoned from their subjects. The BRF will never understand that though.
Weird sentence: “Fabrics that make the grade are collected and cherished over the years”
Anyone else imagining Kelly visiting the storeroom and lovingly stroking them while purring “my precioussssss”?
I loved Michelle Obama’s commentary about Queen Elizabeth. QE asked Michelle about her Jimmy Choos then points to her own and says “These things are quite unpleasant are they not?”