The royal
treatment: the majestic role of fashion in The Crown
Fashion
By recreating
the royals’ outfits and ramping up the glamour, the hit TV drama constantly
blurs the line between fact and fiction. That is what makes the show so
compelling
Jess
Cartner-Morley
@JessC_M
Wed 20 Nov
2019 06.00 GMT
All
publicity is good publicity, they say, but the royal family is the exception
that proves that rule. And recent television coverage of the royals has been –
to put it mildly – a mixed bag. The new series of The Crown launched on Netflix
within hours of that Prince Andrew interview. One was dependably glorious,
which is precisely what royalty is supposed to be. The other was, well, a car
crash seems to be the go-to analogy, although I can’t help feeling car crashes
are slightly bad-taste imagery when it comes to describing royal PR disasters.
The upshot
of all this is that the third series of The Crown will be required to do more
heavy lifting than the previous two, in making us fall in love with it – a
burden that falls in large part upon the wardrobe department. Clothes,
jewellery, hair and makeup are an essential part of The Crown. From the
beginning, the series has made the royals more beautiful and more glamorous
than their real-life counterparts, and invited us to fall under their spell.
The Crown has given the senior royals a newly glittering backstory: here, we
see the Queen a spirited young beauty; Prince Philip golden-haired and
square-jawed.
But fashion
in The Crown does a lot more than sprinkle stardust. Clothes are strategically
employed to blur the line between fact and fiction. The third episode of the
new series covers the Aberfan tragedy of 1966, which killed 144 people, 116 of
them children. Serious and careful, the episode feels almost like a standalone
piece. It leans heavily into the Queen’s delay in visiting the village, her
absence from the funeral, and subsequent change of heart. The story is imbued
with hindsight – you can’t watch it and not be reminded of the Queen’s
reluctance to return to London after Diana’s death 31 years later, and how that
delay reverberated through British culture and changed so much. But the outfit
worn by Olivia Colman is an exact replica of what the Queen wore in 1966: the
side-buttoning red coat with a fur trim to pick out the matching hat; the
darker brown leather gloves; the handbag. This is more than clothes being used
to bring a character to life. This is clothes being used as primary evidence,
to make the particular version of the story being told look like the truth.
The puzzles
around how much of The Crown “really happened” are a key part of what makes it
compelling. In the episode Margaretology, Princess Margaret travels to the
White House and singlehandedly saves the British financial system from collapse
by weaponising her alcohol tolerance and talent for rude limericks. I precis a
little, but you get the gist. Contemporary accounts of the occasion corroborate
the evening being a success – the New York Times reported that the after-dinner
dancing went on until 2am, during which time “there was laughter and chatting;
Margaret smoked a cigarette on a long holder and everyone looked totally at
ease”. But The Crown, indulging the 21st-century fascination with soft power
and diplomatic dressing, has amplified the importance of this event to feed
into its Princess Margaret myth-making.
The
zeitgeist works in mysterious ways, and Princess Margaret the style icon is not
just a creation of Peter Morgan and The Crown. Her 21st-birthday gown, designed
by Christian Dior, had a starring role in the V&A’s blockbusting Dior
exhibition this year. Her official portrait wearing the gown, taken by Cecil
Beaton, appeared on the cover of a special edition of Harpers Bazaar in
February. The cult fashion designer Alessandra Rich, a favourite of everyone
from Kate Moss to the Duchess of Cambridge, cites Princess Margaret as one of
her muses. But by riffing not only on her glamour but also on her political
acumen, The Crown brings echoes of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell into her
on-screen character. There is a mightiness to her party entrances, sweeping
into a room like a galleon in full sail, which would do as well for Wolf Hall
as Buck House.
But most of
all, Helena Bonham Carter’s version of Margaret is the royal family’s Elizabeth
Taylor – a reference that presages the marital dramas to play out later in this
time period. The series’ very first shot of her shows a hefty diamond bracelet
as a naked arm stretches out of tangled sheets to answer a ringing phone. The
second sees her in a floaty, kaftan-style robe, marching across cobbled streets
to pick a fight with her beloved. Diamonds, kaftans and lovers’ tiffs: this is
as Taylor as it gets. Where Vanessa Kirby’s younger Margaret was delicate and
damaged, Bonham Carter brings a Burton-esque exaggeration. She is always either
roaring with laughter, the pearls at her throat catching the light as she
throws back her head, or she is face-down in a two-day hangover. Her wardobe,
like the Queen’s, is in many instances a carbon copy of real life – for
instance, her pink suit at Prince Charles’s investiture is reproduced, along
with the matching outsize pink hair bow which, as it happens, is very on trend
for this season. But elsewhere, her looks – sunglasses, cigarette holders,
winged eyeliner, a startling pair of floral-printed stilettos, off-the-shoulder
dresses that recall Taylor in Giant – are every inch the movie-star princess.
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