- Hello, I'm Hamish Bowles.
And I'm delighted to be joining you today
to bring you a very special life and look
celebrating the enduring style
of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second.
[soft music]
Here she is with her younger sister, Princess Margaret,
of course.
Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret
are wearing glittering gold tissue fancy dress here,
but in everyday life,
they were dressed in identical clothes.
That was the fashion in upper class circles at that point.
They would have these sprigged Lindy print dresses
and stiff little coats.
And in Scotland, they'd wear kilts
with a sort of twin set that picked out the brightest color
in the tartan of the kilts.
Ah fast forward to young Princess Elizabeth in 1947,
in the White Drawing Room of the State Departments
at Buckingham Palace, announcing her engagement.
I believe she's wearing a dress here by Edward Molyneux.
The bows were a sort of girlish indulgence, I think.
Ah, well here we have the Queen
on her actual wedding day of course.
It's an extraordinary dress designed by Norman Hartnell,
who's one of the leading London couturiers at the time.
Here he was inspired by Botticelli's
celebrated painting "Primavera."
And what he's done, which is rather marvelous,
is that the dress, which is a stiff ivory duchess satin,
has these little cutouts of blossoms.
And those cutouts are taken out of the fabric
and appliqued onto the tulle veil,
which has ears of wheat for prosperity
and suggestion of fecundity, dare I say.
The Botticelli effect is slightly mitigated
by the rather stiff quarterback shoulders,
but this is 1947 and London couture
hadn't quite caught up with Dior's
very new fledged, new look.
They had the example of Wallace Simpson,
who of course had absconded with King Edward the Eighth
and forced them into this position
that they hadn't exactly been trained for or were expecting.
And gave them a sort of weariness
of ever looking too fashionable or chic.
So of course, Britain at this point
was emerging from the cataclysmic Second World War.
There was still fabric rationing
and young women all across Britain
sent in their ration books so that the Queen
could have the fairytale wedding dress
that they might have wished for for themselves.
This is the Queen on her coronation day.
You know, her father had died very young.
For the dress,
Norman Hartnell wanted to take the flower emblems
of the four countries that make up Great Britain.
And he was rather disappointed
to discover that it was a leek for Wales.
So he lobbied that one
and eventually they could substitute
the leek for a daffodil.
Here we are at Buckingham Palace,
and this was a study in contrast.
Of course you have President Kennedy
and Jacqueline Kennedy, the first lady.
Jacqueline Kennedy is wearing a copy
of a Givenchy dress by Chez Ninon,
which was the high end, line for line New York establishment
that copied haute couture Persian dresses.
So of course she could be wearing French style
in principle, but of course flying the American flag.
So she could have her cake and eat it.
The Queen by contrast is dressed more sort of pragmatic
and less kind of theatrical.
Oh, that's fun.
This is Queen Elizabeth.
She must be at a Royal Variety performance.
She's about to be introduced to Gracie Fields,
I think, that is on the left.
And of course she's in full Norman Hartnell splendor.
Again you see this kind of starburst embroidery.
She's gone a little bit daring
with a sort of puffball hem
and some of you eagle-eyed royal watchers and fashionistas
might recognize that this is a dress
that was fashionably upcycled
by Princess Beatrice on her wedding.
She'd asked her grandmother if she could borrow a dress
and this is the one that they settled on.
Elegantly transformed.
And of course it was a wonderful gesture, of course
a great homage to her grandmother,
and a lovely sort of timeless wedding dress in fact.
Oh yes, here we have the Queen side saddle
for the Trooping of the Colour.
And of course, so, so much of the Queen's wardrobe,
in fact perhaps all of it, is in a way considered a uniform.
The military uniforms that she wears are
enshrined in historic precedent.
Ah, here we have the Queen in 1969
clearly not embracing London and the swinging sixties.
She's at a meal with Princess Anne and Prince Charles
and her husband.
This is a still from a BBC documentary
which was the initiative of Prince Philip.
He thought it would sort of humanize the royal family
to let British television in to film their lives.
In fact, I think the royal family worked better
shrouded in mystery and mystique
because they were revealed as a somewhat ordinary
[laughs] family living in an extraordinary way.
I just noticed that rather marvelous Stobbs painting
on the wall behind them at breakfast.
[violin music]
Here we are at Balmoral in Scotland
where the Queen goes every summer for holiday.
And I think she's much more in her element here
in traditional riding clothes, of course,
and the silk head scarf that she's made so iconic.
Goodness me, this is the Queen in 1976
at the Royal Ascot races.
This is the one occasion where the Queen feels
free to sort of embrace fashion up to a point.
She's sort of embracing a style statement, I guess,
with these sort of flame red accents.
Perhaps not her finest sartorial hour.
Here's the Queen on beaming form with her corgis.
She has to be always visible in the crowd
and you know, she's of diminutive stature.
And the solution that her courtiers came up with,
which is a brilliant one,
is that she would be in a really singing color
and a dramatic hat in the same color.
So that even in a crowd of hundreds of,
or thousands of people,
she's gonna stand out as this little kind of beacon
of color in the middle of them all.
I was very struck there was an incredible exhibition
of the Queen's clothes at Buckingham Palace,
and they'd been arranged in this sort of
rainbow of shades, dozens and dozens of ensembles.
And you saw that really,
she's sort of worn everything apart from
perhaps gray and beige.
This is the Queen in 1988 at the Trouping of the Colour
with Princes' Harry and William, of course,
on the balcony at Buckingham Palace.
What you don't see here
is that the room they're coming out of
is an incredible room filled with
Chinese inspired treasures
that were designed for George the Fourth
and came from Brighton Pavilion.
This sort of fanciful house on the English coast
that that monarch used to retreat to
in the early 19th century.
And here, of course, the Queen in a sort of
a very strident shade of kind of slightly turquoise blue.
And of course, you know,
the moment she steps out on the balcony,
she's gonna be immediately recognizable.
Wow, this is Her Majesty really going for it.
This is the Royal Variety Performance in 1999.
And she's certainly giving us a bit of variety here.
It's a very unusual choice
because of course,
what we've seen for decades is this sort of
head to toe solid color look.
So suddenly to have this kind of harlequin effect
is rather splendid, I think
and totally unexpected.
[soft piano music]
Oh, I love this shot.
This is an unusual candid of the Queen
sort of cracking up because her husband
has to stand to attention, of course in his uniform,
in the presence of his Monarch.
And again, you know, yet another strident, turquoise blue
and the hat of course matched exactly
to the color of the coat.
And the fabric used for the binding of the collar
has been used in greater amplitude
for the upper brim of the hat.
And again, you know, if you look at images
of Princess Elizabeth as a young girl,
she's wearing coats that look pretty much exactly like this.
So from the beginning,
the Monarch has worked with her courtiers,
and in this instance milliners,
to create clothes that are a compliment
to the host nation on her global tours.
She knew there was gonna be a photo op
in front of the iconic Sydney Opera House.
And you can see that the hat
has been designed to complement just that.
This is the Queen back in the White Drawing Room
at Buckingham Palace.
Here she is in the extraordinary inky blue silk velvet cape
of the Order of the Garter, worn over a
figured sort of matelasse damask evening gown
and looking every inch the Queen.
And as portraits, and of course the queen has sat to
famous artists from Pietro Annigoni to Lucian Freud,
photographers from Cecil Beaton, Norman Parkinson,
and this instance, Annie Leibovitz
who's really continued that tradition of this sort of
very imposing state portrait, you know.
This is absolutely a defining image of the Monarch.
Oh my goodness, me I remember this moment.
It was absolutely extraordinary.
This was the then very young designer Richard Quinn's
fashion show during London fashion week.
There were three seats at the end of the runway
just where the girls would be coming out
that had been reserved.
And they were being very, very jealously guarded
I couldn't help notice.
Anyway [laughs].
There was this absolutely electrifying moment
when we'd all sat down.
I think there might even have been a turn away announcement
asking us to sit down
and, you know which is standard in a fashion show
that's about to start.
So we all sat down and then quite incredibly [laughs]
the Queen appeared.
Her Majesty was about to present the inaugural
Queen Elizabeth the Second Award for British Design,
which is why she was there.
Richard was going to be the recipient.
And [laughs] I just cannot tell you how electrifying
it was to be in this room.
And she walks in and you know,
there's this incredible aura and magnetism exuded
because of who she is in her role
and one's respect for her.
So quite incredible.
She sat down next to Anna Wintour.
I remember
Richard Quinn had done this incredible collection.
It was all these different sort of 1950s scarf prints
morphed onto a kind of Lee Barry eighties performance artist
sort of idea. [laughs]
The Queen, I believe, did admire some of the prints.
This is Her Majesty in 2021
attending a polo match at Windsor.
Now that I think about it, it's quite extraordinary
because it really is
exactly what she was wearing as a young girl.
You know, the flowered sprigged dress
the very formally tailored A-line coat, unbelted.
A matching hat that's been very
carefully and scrupulously color-coordinated
to match the ensemble.
Here we have this unusually heartwarming image
of Her Majesty the Queen, of course,
celebrates one of her very great passions.
She is surrounded by two of her beloved Fell Ponies.
There's symbolism in the Queen's clothes,
which of course are often designed symbolically
to convey messages.
Even in this informal photograph
she's wearing a coat of Edinburgh Green,
the color of her late husband, Prince Phillip's livery.
And that's of course a very resonant
and personal and poignant choice.
If there's something we can all learn
from Her Majesty the Queen,
it's perhaps this idea of finding a style
that works for you very early on
and sticking with it.
It's been an absolute joy to revisit
her Majesty's lifetime in looks.
And I want to express my appreciation
for her contribution to the job and to style.
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[soft piano music]