The Crown recreates Diana's famous "revenge dress" moment from 1994 in series five of The Crown. Photo / Netflix
Divorce, adultery and shoulder pads galore — the series is about to return, and with it a newly single Princess Diana. Karen Dacre speaks to the costume designers who remade her Nineties outfits.
There is Christian Dior’s unveiling of the New Look in 1947, there is Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway grate in billowing white knife pleats — and then there’s the story of the English princess and the perfect little black dress. Twenty-eight years on and Diana’s LBD moment has long been committed to the fashion history books. Chosen by Diana to wear to the Serpentine Gallery, London, on June 29, 1994, the same evening that her husband made his famous adultery admission in a tell-all television documentary, the Christina Stambolian LBD sparked a million conversations, inspired the term “revenge dressing” and changed the way women dress for ever.
“We can’t overestimate its impact,” says Sidonie Roberts, head buyer and associate costume designer on Netflix’s hit drama The Crown. “In the revenge dress not only do we have the birth of a new woman, we have the birth of an icon for women all over the world. It was a deeply empowering moment.”
Under the direction of the seasoned costume director Amy Roberts (no relation), Sidonie was charged with recreating this fashion moment (including a replica of the original revenge dress) for the hotly anticipated fifth series of the TV drama that charts the world’s most famous dysfunctional family. Amy Roberts collected an Emmy for Outstanding Period Costumes on series three, and has worked on Peter Morgan’s drama ever since. The duo describe their working relationship in harmonious terms: “Amy paints the big picture and then I come in and do the detail,” Sidonie says.
This season — with an “annus horribilis” of a story to tell — Amy and Sidonie set about dressing the Windsors for a period blotted by relationship woes, tabloid humiliation and the tragic death of the royal family’s most popular member.
It’s also the moment fashion fans have been waiting for, with Diana transforming from shy debutante to sizzling style icon. While viewers had been delighted by Emma Corrin in the role of the young princess complete with preppy style and puff shoulders, this season, with The Great Gatsby actress Elizabeth Debicki in the hot seat, is a veritable fashion feast.
The revenge dress marked a turning point for Diana and the show. “There’s a beautiful kind of symbolism in the fact that it’s black,” Sidonie says. “Until this moment we have only ever used the colour black to mark a funeral or someone in mourning. Captured in one dress is the death of a marriage and the death of her relationship with the palace. Everything changed after that.”
The Diana that emerged is revealed beautifully on screen. We see her, newly single, in sharp-shouldered jackets in primary shades, grown-up camel coats and calf-length ballerina skirts that cement her emergence as a power dresser. The princess’s rebirth as a sex symbol is also confirmed, perhaps most feverishly in the first episode when we see Debicki standing majestically on the deck of a yacht sporting a champagne-coloured swimsuit reminiscent of Diana’s favoured Versace styles and her signature sunglasses. For those of us who remember seeing similar images of Princess Diana on the front page of newspapers it is a thrilling watch. It helps that Amy and Sidonie have gone to pains to make sure the clothes for those flagship scenes are accurate.
“We know everyone is waiting for those moments, and try to do them justice by steering as close to the reality as possible,” Sidonie says. “There is an extensive amount of research involved.”
Somewhat surprisingly, Sidonie finds recreating those blockbuster moments to be the easiest part of her job. More taxing is the wardrobe Diana wore away from the public eye. “We also have to think about all the outfits that weren’t captured in photographs. In this season we meet the private Diana. The Diana we see now locked in the flat at Kensington Palace. She’s separated from Charles but she’s still a prisoner. Our job was to create a wardrobe of clothes to go with that layer of her life.”
The result is spot-on — or at least it tracks with what seems believable when I try to imagine the same. In the second episode, which follows the recording of the Andrew Morton tapes, Diana wears an oversized cricket jumper with a white bowling skirt. In the same episode, hiding away from the cameras that plagued her, we also see her in one of her signature college sweatshirts.
What’s brilliant about Diana’s fashion in this series is that it feels perfectly at home in 2022 — as a viewer you both admire it and want it for yourself. (I spent a good ten minutes googling “Princess Diana earrings”.) It also helps that the fashion world remains obsessed with Nineties style. “You only have to look around Dalston to see that everyone still wears clothes from the Nineties,” says Sidonie, referring to the vintage slogan sweaters and cycling shorts that are now a sort of uniform in the east London enclave. “There was an Off-White show inspired by Diana,” she continues. “We don’t have to make huge concerted efforts to make Diana feel current to a modern viewer.”
The duo have perfected a technique (“the Diana algorithm”) for identifying and sourcing clothes for the princess and leave no stone unturned when it comes to finding the right pieces. The research trips take them to stores all over the world and to designers who lend items for the show as well as to eBay which, Sidonie notes, “came up trumps for Nineties fabrics”.
Inspiration for the characters’ clothes is found everywhere from paintings to Miu Miu campaigns. History books are crucial too. “We research everyone to the nth degree and that’s our jumping-off point. And then, based on the stuff we know, we think, ‘Would she have this in her wardrobe?’ " This goes for all the characters they dress, whether it’s a ballgown for the Queen or an extra in a crowd scene.
For Her Majesty (now played by Imelda Staunton), who is in her late sixties/early seventies this series, there are longer-length skirts and more sombre tones than we have seen her wear previously. “I suppose the feeling for her, like any woman of that age, has a slight melancholy about it. The bigger world is shrinking for her and also her family life is imploding,” Amy says.
She has found joy in the process of wardrobing the older characters. “I always thought this series wouldn’t be so much fun,” Amy says. “Certainly, with the exception of Diana, I knew it wasn’t going to be sexy, but this has been the most rewarding in many ways. I loved the idea of layering a woman’s life.”
Undoubtedly, she and Sidonie do them justice.
The Crown series five is available on Netflix from November 9.
Written by: Karem Dacre
© The Times of London
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