Even after her divorce from Charles, Diana remained the most popular woman of her time and from an official princess turned into a princess of the people.
Lady Dee also loved fashion and was at the forefront of the UK fashion industry. On a tall, slender, long-legged Diana, tight trousers and tight-fitting dresses of the 80s and 90s looked perfect, which, coupled with skepticism about the court dress code, quickly made a British Jackie Kennedy out of a modest girl.
A - accessories
Diana loved jewelry: she liked to fool the audience, who mistook the crystals on her large clips and earrings for huge gems. At the same time, she actively wore pearls - they ceased to be considered age-related precisely thanks to the princess.
For example, Diana came to the premiere of Back to the Future in a long pearl necklace tied in a knot and thrown back (this is how she emphasized the deep cut of the dress on the back). But Lady Di's favorite accessory was, of course, the Lady Dior bag - it was dedicated to Diana by Gianfranco Ferre in 1995.
B - baseball cap
On May 2, 1988, for a polo match, Diana put on jeans, Cossack boots, a jacket and a blue baseball cap. And then, if you remember, she had not yet divorced Charles and officially bore the title of princess. For this she was loved by millions - she ignored silk if common sense demanded good-quality jeans and a cap instead of a hat.
B - collars
A variety of collars, which in the 80s were a favorite field for design experiments, Diana wore boldly. Huge turn-down collars with embroidery and lace, monstrous designs of brocade in the spirit of Elizabeth I, Victorian racks tied with a black ribbon (hello to today's Saint Laurent and Gucci) - it's hard to find at least one type of collar that was not in the princess's wardrobe.
G - ski overalls
The royal family was followed everywhere by the paparazzi, and Diana always met a high level of expectations. Even at the ski resort, where she and Charles and the children went on vacation, the princess looked perfect. You definitely saw these pictures: Diana in scarlet (blue, green - there were a lot of them) overalls and hair-to-hair styling drives down the slope, not forgetting to smile dazzlingly.
D - diadem
The famous diadem "Knot of Love" belonged to Queen Mary, then to Elizabeth II and after Diana, to whom Elizabeth presented jewelry as a wedding gift in 1981. The tiara with 19 large teardrop-shaped pearls and many diamonds was the princess's favorite jewel. But royal diamonds are included in the royal marriage, so after her divorce from Charles, Diana returned her gift to Elizabeth. And last year, Kate Middleton appeared in Love Knots at a diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace.
E - European designers
Until the marriage of Diana and Charles finally fell apart, she wore things only by domestic designers - according to Anna Harvey, British fashion owes its flourishing to Diana. But after 1992, Lady Dee gave herself free rein and began to wear Chanel, Valentino, Christian Lacroix, Dior and Versace. Especially Versace - both she and Gianni fanatically loved bright colors and sexy cut. By coincidence, Diana survived the couturier by only a month and a half.
J- jackets
Lady Dee never wanted to dress smartly, but jackets and dresses with shoulder pads, popular in the 80s, nevertheless made their way into her wardrobe. Later, the princess's stylist will tell that the emphasis on the shoulders was a mistake with Diana, but even these controversial images eventually entered the annals of fashion history.
З - umbrellas
At first, Diana wore classic dark cane umbrellas. But later, she slightly modernized even this traditional accessory of the royal family, changing from neutral black to rich blue - one of her favorite colors.
And - playing with proportions
In 1980, Anna Harvey, then fashion editor at Vogue UK, was assigned to Diana as her personal stylist. So the brilliant sense of proportion for which the princess was famous is partly the merit of her assistant. Diana had broad shoulders and boyishly narrow hips, but who was paying attention? Anna came up with an emphasis on the waist and neckline, and at receptions the princess often appeared in dresses on one shoulder, which visually softened her silhouette.
K- combination
In 1996, Diana Spencer came to the Met Gala arm in arm with John Galliano and in a daring Christian Dior nightie made of blue silk. Yes, at that time she was already an ex-princess, but she was still the mother of the crown princes, so it was very daring. That exit became historical, and the dress is now wandering from one exhibition of the French House to another.
L - Leaves (and other jeans)
Diana liked the relaxed, life-like images much more than the protocol suits with kid gloves. For example, she adored jeans and often wore classic high-waisted Levi's. Diana wore them at first only for games with children and sports competitions, but after 1992 she began to wear them constantly. The iconic image of Lady Dee is a man's jacket, white shirt, Chanel pumps and blue jeans tied with a brown belt. Over time, Diana had a lot of jeans, and different ones, but all of them invariably emphasized the waist and opened the ankles.
M - men's suit
Diana knew a lot about the right jackets and straight trousers sitting at the waist. Particularly good was the simple pantsuit that Diana chose for a photo shoot in support of a charity dress auction in 1997. In the pictures, she stands in Kensington Palace next to a mannequin dressed in a pearl-embroidered dress by Catherine Walker. But I don't want to look at him, but at Diana in a black jacket and a white knitted top.
H - low heel
Diana was already tall, so she made official visits in low-heeled shoes (this is how kitten heels returned to fashion). The "court shoemaker" was Manolo Blahnik, who made several hundred pairs for the princess. Later, Chanel pumps and Jimmy Choo shoes appeared in her wardrobe - they say that it was Diana's positive feedback that gave Jimmy a start in big fashion.
O - open shoulders
While Diana was married to Charles, she could not appear in overly sensual outfits. But her love for off-the-shoulder dresses was already making itself felt: in September 1985, the princess and John Travolta performed a legendary (and rather bouncy) dance at the White House, and at this historic moment she was wearing a Victor Edelstein velvet dress with a moderately open line shoulders. And after the divorce, Lady Dee came to every second party in dresses that completely bare her shoulders.
P - engagement ring
In the royal family, Diana was a revolutionary. She even chose an engagement ring contrary to all traditions: she did not want to order jewelry from a jeweler according to an individual sketch and just bought the model she liked from the Garrard catalog. The model with a blue sapphire surrounded by 14 diamonds cost “only” 60 thousand dollars - because of this it was later ironically nicknamed “the commoner's sapphire”. Since then, the ring has been repeated hundreds of thousands of times (even Maison Margiela offered its own version of the jewelry), otherwise the original one is now worn by Kate Middleton.
R - shirts
The shirt was a masculine cut with casually rolled sleeves that fit perfectly into Lady Dee's wardrobe: it was formal enough to be etiquette, yet relaxed enough to please the princess herself. And the photographs in which Diana in a white shirt rolls little William on a pony around the royal court have become for millions of British the visual embodiment of the modern royal family - alive and at the same time flawless.
С - wedding dress
Despite the controversial aesthetic merits that fashion critics still love to discuss, Princess Diana's dress is the most famous wedding dress in modern history. British designers Elizabeth and David Emanuel were responsible for it: they adorned the dress with 10,000 river pearls, gold embroidery and a 7-meter train. According to Anna Harvey, the result was what Diana wanted: she dreamed of looking like a princess from a fairy tale, and she succeeded.
T - waist
In any image of Diana, the waistline was one of the main accents - the princess either emphasized it with a belt, or chose jackets and dresses with a sculptural cut. She knew what she was doing: it made her endless legs look even longer.
Y - styling
Anna Harvey was Diana's stylist for 16 years - from the moment she married Charles until her death. And all this time she tried to persuade the princess to change her hair. However, Diana was adamant and firmly defended the reinforced concrete, varnished structure: she wanted that neither wind, nor rain, nor snow could catch her by surprise.
F - T-shirts
A simple white T-shirt did not suit Princess Diana too much, but it was quite consistent with the character and taste of Lady Dee - a free woman and mother of the Crown Princes. Diana wore T-shirts with her favorite blazers and casual trousers, and this suited her much more than the lurid suits of the 80s. By the way, her everyday images from 1992-1997. completely timeless: they can be quoted literally even now, even if you have nothing to do with the royal family.
X - hunters
The most popular rubber boots and footwear of British aristocrats in the world, Diana also had hunters. It was these boots that she wore on her honeymoon with Charles in Scotland.
C - color
No matter how Anna Harvey tried, she was never able to dress Diana in calm gray, beige and dark blue. The princess loved catchy shades and could easily dress in red or sapphire from head to toe.
H - chokers
Diana was quite picky about necklaces and only wore jewelry. She had several favorite chokers: from large pearls in 4 rows, from small pearls with a huge sapphire in the center, from green velvet with diamonds and sapphire and diamond with large emeralds. Diana wore the latter in an oriental manner - like a bandage, and today it is worn by Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, but in the traditional way - around her neck.
Ш - hats
In short, she didn't like them. This accessory became the next protocol part of the image after gloves, which Diana decided to refuse. Of course, for the official outings of the royal family, she sometimes made exceptions, but here the key word is "sometimes": the princess preferred her signature styling to any hat.
Yu - skirts that open the knees
After 1992, Diana's hands were untied in terms of clothing. It was then that she fell in love with European sensual brands and began to allow herself much more explicit things than before. The neckline became deeper, and the skirts were shorter, and this was very good for her. According to the general opinion of her acquaintances, in the last five years of her life, the ex-princess was cosmically beautiful.
I am bright prints
Diana was especially fond of active drawings in the first half of the 80s (later she would move on to monochromatic things in bright pure shades). She especially liked the houndstooth print: the large graphic pattern, according to Diana, was suitable for an ankle-length straight coat and for suits with a narrow skirt. With age, she began to handle prints more carefully and added them to the images a little - for example, complementing a black jacket with white lapels with a black and white striped skirt.
