Royal Biographer Says Queen Elizabeth's Fashion Was "Questionable" Until This Key Royal Figure Died, Allowing Her to "Blossom"
A new book about the late Queen claims that her "frumpy" style was revolutionized in the early 2000s.
Queen Elizabeth was known for her rainbow-colored coats and creative hats in her later decades, but in the ‘90s and early 2000s, her style was a bit more “frumpy,” according to royal biographer Hugo Vickers. In his new biography of the late Queen, which is serialized in the Daily Mail this week, Vickers wrote that Queen Elizabeth “seemed determined to look like a pensioner” once she turned 65—but when a key royal figure died, her wardrobe shifted.
Writing that the late Queen started “sporting a frumpy-looking hairstyle” in the ‘90s, Vickers said that he felt Queen Elizabeth’s “fashion choices were questionable.”
He noted that it “wasn’t until after the death of the Queen Mother” in 2002 that Queen Elizabeth “blossomed, allowing her clothes to become brighter.” The change was so noticeable that Vickers mentioned to someone, “Did we have to wait until the Queen Mother died before the Queen began to dress well?”
Queen Elizabeth wears a Hardy Amies suit in 1995.
Queen Elizabeth attends Richard Quinn's London Fashion Week show in 2018 with her trusted assistant, Angela Kelly (far right), and Anna Wintour (second from right).
The late Queen is pictured in a bright pink outfit in 2016.
“Back came the reply: ‘No, you had to wait until Hardy Amies died,” Vickers wrote, referring the late fashion designer who dressed Queen Elizabeth for decades and passed away in 2003.
Queen Elizabeth’s longtime dresser and personal assistant, Angela Kelly, started walking for the palace in 1994, and Vickers pointed out that it was Kelly who “revolutionized the Queen’s late-life style.”
In a new interview with Vanity Fair published March 30, Kelly discussed how she encouraged the late Queen to experiment with brighter colors and shorter hemlines. “I told her, ‘Your Majesty, you have good legs. Let’s show them off’,” Kelly told the magazine. “Needless to say the hems on the clothes were raised.”
At the end of the day, Kelly said that Queen Elizabeth wasn't necessarily focused on fashion, but Her Majesty enjoyed the process. “The Queen loved seeing the clothes being made from the beginning to the end, seeing the material,” she said, adding that Queen Elizabeth “liked the pastel and deep colors but she preferred people to focus on her speeches rather than her clothes.” Sounds a lot like Princess Kate.
