the crown season 4 netflix
Netflix

The Crown Season 4 Is a Feast for Princess Diana Fans

The style, the story, the struggles. It’s essential royal viewing

We first see Princess Diana onscreen in The Crown season 4 as a rather absurd wood nymph, dressed as a character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s the imagined scene of her first meeting with Charles—she is a young teen and he is dating her older sister.

The show’s much-anticipated season 4, which debuts on Netflix this Sunday, spans Diana’s first decade in the public eye, from 1979 to 1990. In that time, “the people’s princess,” played winningly with equal parts spunk and pathos by newcomer Emma Corrin, goes from a nursery school assistant in yellow bib overalls to the sleek, designer-wearing flashbulb-bait of Diana, international icon.

Such is Diana’s enduring influence that her wide range of now 40-year-old outfits somehow feel fresh. Repeated revivals of ’80s trends have made her style trademarks familiar again: the puffy sleeves, boosted shoulders, bold jewel-tone colours, vivid prints and exaggerated collars. The preppy Sloane Ranger look favoured by Diana when she first hit the public eye as Prince Charles’s betrothed—Wellingtons, Barbour jackets and endless ruffled collars—featured in Tory Burch’s Spring 2020 collection.

Diana’s off-duty style has made a comeback, too: the bike shorts, slogan sweatshirts and graphic jumpers that she was relentlessly papped in on school runs and gym visits were riffed on by Virgil Abloh in his Spring 2018 collection for Off-White.

In real royal life, the past few years have been a similarly intense tabloid fever dream as Diana’s stylish daughters-in-law and adorable grandchildren have stepped into the blinding spotlight. Duchesses Meghan and Kate have both kept the focus on their late mother-in-law, wearing her jewellery and making deliberate outfit homages to her. Just the other day, duchess Kate wore a large, floppy black collar over a cream blouse that called Diana to mind.

the crown season 4 netflix
Getty Images (left); Netflix (right)Diana and Prince Charles announce their engagement in 1981 in real-life (left) and on The Crown season 4 (right).

The Crown’s costume designer, 71-year-old wardrobe department vet Amy Roberts, has outfitted plenty of British period costume dramas, but telling Diana’s story through clothing was a challenge because her image, frozen in time by her tragic death at age 36, has become myth.

“There is a wealth of photographic images to be had on our lead characters,” says Roberts, who won an Emmy for her work on season 3. “I tend to do a mass of research, absorb it, then forget about it and just get on with doing it. Those images, colours and period details do stay in your mind, but it’s good to be free of them to put your own stamp on things.”

Diana’s most famous piece of clothing—her 1981 wedding dress—was created for the show with the assistance of one of its original designers, David Emanuel, who provided the blueprints. Roberts says the effort put into making the dress was extensive but worth it: Four people spent four weeks working with 95 metres of fabric and 100 metres of lace. But it isn’t a slavish reproduction. Roberts was looking to evoke the emotions of the piece, uncover the “spirit of that dress.” 

The gown actually makes only a fleeting appearance—the wedding episode is really about Diana discovering that Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) is still in the thrall of Camilla Parker Bowles (Emerald Fennell, who manages to make the now Duchess of Cornwall both sympathetic and attractive, in a forthright, chain-smoking kind of way). 

The wardrobe team recreated many more of Diana’s most iconic outfits: the silver taffeta gown with bolero jacket that she wore on a solo trip to New York, her one-shoulder Catherine Walker gowns, the green polka-dot dress with enormous white Peter Pan collar that she wore to introduce baby Prince William on the lawn. Diana and Charles’s big episode together takes place on their triumphant six-week tour of Australia with baby William, where Diana begins to shine. She wore 17 outfits on that tour, all recreated in careful detail.

the crown season 4 netflix
NetflixThat famous chin down, eyes up glance.

There is some real vintage in the wardrobe mix, sourced from fashion capitals, vintage dealers and car-boot sales, as Roberts puts it, but more often the costume team made the outfits from scratch. (You can inspect them in close detail at the Brooklyn Museum’s virtual exhibition of the costumes here.) Much of the effort was put into finding authentic period fabrics, buttons, jewellery and accessories. Fabric is important, says assistant costume designer and head buyer Sidonie Roberts. “The dresses Diana wore here were so specific to the ’80s in terms of the particular weight of the fabrics, which were mainly silks, and therefore how they drape on the body. They were distinctively ’80s in colour also.”

Much like the real Diana used clothing to signal her moods and telegraph subtle messages, her onscreen wardrobe is designed to show the arc of her storyline and relationships with the other characters. “For Diana, we decided to isolate the colours she wore that the other royals did not, and make that her particular colour scheme to further emphasize the narrative of ‘her’ vs. ‘them’,” says Roberts. “So we introduced a lot more red and black as well as typically ’80s shades of green and purple.”

By contrast, the older royals fade into the background in their staid outfits. What stands out most is how old the Queen and Princess Margaret look. Simply put, in the 1980s, middle-aged ladies dressed less like J.Lo and more like chintzy sofas.
Queen Elizabeth II, played again by Olivia Colman, looks dreary, drab and grim-faced throughout most of the 10 episodes, save for when she is mucking about joyously in tweeds at Balmoral or riding with Princess Anne.

Roberts describes a deliberate switch this season from the Queen’s “clear” pinks and blues of the hopeful 1960s into “middle-aged” colours, sombre brownish tones reflective of what Roberts calls the “broken Britain” of the ’80s. As for Margaret, who suffered ill health and depression in that era, the costume team put her in “bruised” shades.

the crown season 4 netflix
NetflixVivacious and beloved, Diana stands out among the older royals.

Diana, the breath of fresh air and the “black sheep” (her famous and now re-issued black sheep sweater worn by Harry Styles is yet more evidence of her currency) stands out, a tall and willowy beauty whom the cameras adore. But there is a duality to her image that exemplifies her struggle with her public and private personas. Her shoulder pads and military detailing read as armour, while the soft florals and playful touches where she injected her own witty, idiosyncratic style allow her relatable vulnerability to show through.

The show does address, in graphic fashion, Diana’s long-running struggles with bulimia, the dark side of her intense fame and her isolation within the stony bosom of the royal hierarchy.

You see what you want to in The Crown’s Diana, for like her real-life counterpart, she is a vehicle for the whole world’s projected fantasies. Given how large she looms in the collective memories of those of us who lived through the era, she occupies less air time than you might expect. The fleeting nature of her moments onscreen make you hungry for more, just as we were always hungry for more of her in real life.

Toward the end of the season, we see Diana blossom on her solo tour to the U.S., where she fearlessly hugs children who have AIDS and is mobbed by screaming crowds like a rock star wherever she goes. Her wardrobe begins to reflect her growing independent strength, the woman she is becoming.

One gown in particular packs a narrative punch: a body-con, cut-out black gown that encapsulates Diana’s riskier, sexier style at the end of her short life. It takes centre stage at a lonely Christmas at Balmoral as her marriage teeters on the brink, communicating her resolve to not let the bastards get her down much longer. The dress suggests a twirl around the dance floor at a disco, its promise of life and fun in keen contrast to the cold castle and colder company. In the end, the show delivers a Diana who is only beginning to learn her own power.

 

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