So you’re binge-watching season five of The Crown and you’re thinking three things: Wigs! Eyeliner! Earrings! OK, that’s just the Princess Diana close-ups. While Emma Corrin was previously tasked with Lady Di’s awkward integration into the royal family – all ballet attire, sheep jumpers and Barbour jackets – Elizabeth Debicki evokes the People’s Princess’s estrangement from The Firm. Her clothes are a direct representation of her feelings.
Holed up in Kensington Palace away from the curtain twitchers scrutinising her every move, Diana becomes a free agent when it comes to fashion. Out with the pearl twin sets and in with the modern hoop earrings! Stuffy tailoring? She’s a Levi’s woman now. “There’s a real core identity that comes [across], because she did a lot of it herself,” says Sidonie Roberts, head buyer and associate costume designer on The Crown. “She enjoyed it.”
The early Diana years, when her penchant for jazzy ’80s knits and “fun” fashion shone through.
Photo: Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images
Sports-era Di, when logo jumpers had become something of a signature.
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Paired with those high-waisted, stone-washed jeans and flowy, comfy pleated skirts were oversized cricket jumpers, varsity sweaters and crew-necks emblazoned with the charitable causes she held dear. While logo pullovers are de rigueur today, using clothes to send a message was not as common back then – especially for a royal figurehead. Even now, you would never see Kate, the modern-day Princess of Wales, wearing a branded tee or knit that implies her political or personal inclinations. Diana, quite literally, wore her heart on her sleeve, from that beloved British Lung Foundation jumper to the Virgin Atlantic number that suggested she might be dreaming of far-flung locations.
Elizabeth Debicki as Diana in season five of The Crown.
Photo: IMDb
“Diana was completely enigmatic and alluring, but at the same time she’s accessible [in the sense that anyone can buy into her style],” adds Roberts of the enduring appeal of the royal, whose tracksuits tucked into cowboy boots and oversized sports jumpers thrown on over cycling shorts have been much emulated since her period of growing freedom in the early ’90s.
The much-copied polo outfit, complete with that British Lung Foundation pullover that spoke a thousand words.
Photo: Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images
Collegiate crew-necks showed a woman who was young at heart.
Photo: Tony Harris - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images
But behind this fashion-forward persona was a woman who also used louche silhouettes and enrobing sweaters as a form of physical protection. It was years later that Diana, a victim of bulimia, had the confidence to wear Versace’s athletic-looking tank dresses and shirts tucked into belted slim-cut denim. Those oversized pullovers enabled her to slowly come out of her shell as she, to use Roberts’s phrase, became “less Palacised” and refound Diana: the mother, the fashion follower, the campaigner, and the advocate for going your own way.
Next time you’re watching Debicki perfect the head tilt and hurt eyes of a woman she says “broke the fourth wall and reaped the benefits [before] the consequences came hard and heavy”, know that none of the things Diana wore, particularly those jumpers, were just clothes.
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Lead image: Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images
