The style of Lady Diana in "The Crown 4"

On November 15 The Crown 4 hit Netflix. The series on the most beloved royal family ever returns with a season focused on three charismatic, powerful and iconic female figures: Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman), Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) e Lady Diana (Emma Corrin).

The showrunner Peter Morgan brings us to the late 1970s, in a Britain that faces the impact of the controversial policies introduced by Thatcher, the first woman to become Prime Minister, and the conflicts within the Commonwealth; he shows us the Queen's intolerance towards the Iron Lady and misunderstandings with her children; but, above all, he tells us the love story between Charles (Josh O'Connor) and the young Lady Diana Spencer.

Charles is thirty years old, he is still a bachelor and his mother wants him to marry to ensure the line of succession to the throne. Thus begins the hunt for his wife. The perfect match is a girl named Diana, a romantic nineteen-year-old schoolteacher who, as suggested, in a letter from Lord Mountbatten, Her Majesty's cousin and mentor to the prince, should make Charles Camilla Parker-Bowles (Emerald Fennell) forget and avoid making a scandal like Edward and Wallis Simpson. Unfortunately, the plan does not work. Charles and Diana get married, they travel around the world on big tours, have fox hunting sessions at Balmoral, they have two children. But most of the time he flirts on the phone with his mistress, revealing to viewers the background of a "somewhat crowded" wedding, as in a historic TV interview the Princess of Wales described the love triangle of which she was the involuntary protagonist. 

Diana has not yet crowned princess of the people, but she is already a little thorn in the Windsor's side, ready to blossom and to push both Elizabeth and Charles (not that the task was difficult) out of the hearts of the English. Clues follow, episode after episode, as when in a scene recalling Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette skates for Buckingham Palace while listening to Duran Duran's Girls on Film or when she embraces children with AIDS with a great horror of her spouse. 

After Queen Elizabeth and her suit palette, after Margaret with her rebellious style and Princess Anne with her royal cool outfits, comes Diana Spencer. All it takes to monopolize the scene is a shot, a close-up of this girl with blond hair, blue eyes and a shy look, relegating the rest of the cast to the background. 10 episodes later it's already Lady D fever. The same one that inspired Tory Burch to dedicate the SS20 collection to the English Rose, and inspired to Virgil Abloh the SS17 creations of Off-White or a Vogue Paris editorial starring Hailey Bieber. 

The research to recreate the looks of Diana and of the protagonists of the show has been maniacal. Costume designer Amy Roberts has watched thousands of photos and hundreds of hours of video to replicate the most iconic outfits of the Princess of Wales, but also the ones of the queen and The Crown's other characters.

Everything starts from the scripts, the stories they tell themselves, the photographic images. From this comes a pictorial journey for each of the main characters, which we captured on an inspirational wall - explains Amy - The purchase of fabrics started the work, since most of the clothes are designed and made from scratch. Compared to the third season, the shapes are very different: wider shoulders, wider tops, skirts and narrower pants. Dresses, like women, are gaining more and more power.

Style choices evolve as Diana becomes self-confident. So, if at the beginning of the series she opts for a wardrobe consisting of tartan and cozy cardigans and pastel colors, waist belts and dancers for official parties, towards the end she acquires a more refined look with more sophisticated clothes, which often hide a precise meaning. Some examples?  Catherine Walker's blue dress worn while dancing with Charles during the Royal Tour in Australia was the same color as Cinderella's to give the people a fairy couple; on a state visit to Saudi Arabia she appeared in a silk dress embroidered with golden hawks, the symbol of the kingdom; or as when she opted for a velvet suit, richer to the touch, to visit a hospital for blind children. 

One of the highlights is Diana's famous wedding dress, created by David and Elizabeth Emanuel and worn for the wedding with Charles in Saint Paul's Cathedral: a sort of giant meringue, with puffed sleeves, layers of ivory silk taffeta, antique lace and a train of over 7 and a half meters (the longest in the history of royal weddings). Emma Corrin told about the emotion she felt wearing the dress: 

When you see Lady Diana's wardrobe in the series, you realize the path she takes to discover herself: those clothes mark her path of growth. The designer Elizabeth Emanuel brought us the original patterns of the dress she designed for her wedding and I was shocked when we recreated it.I had the ten people trying to put me in this dress with the train, which was so long, and no one had seen me and then these doors open [and] everyone fell silent. The atmosphere changed in an instant and in that moment I really understood all the responsibility of recreating that moment.

The beauty choices follow the same evolution of the outfits: from a teenager with a blonde bob and no-makeup to a confident woman who uses eyeliner and mascara to emphasize the look, blush to highlight the cheekbones and a veil of peach or red-orange lipstick on the lips.  The make-up palette reflects the costume choices made by Roberts and Sidonie Roberts who explains:

With Diana we recreated her exact looks. We then decided to iisolate the colors she wore that the other royals did not, and make that her particular color scheme to further emphasize the narrative of "her" versus "them". So we introduced more red and black, as well as greens and purples, in season four.