special
When Diana Met...
When Diana Met… takes listeners inside Princess Diana’s most notable meetings with public figures, politicians, dignitaries, and celebrities to reveal often-overlooked truths and misunderstandings about her life as Princess of Wales. Host Aminatou Sow examines those iconic and memorable connections and what they teach us about power, gender, and control.
Fashion Designer Elizabeth Emanuel
When Diana Met...
Dec 22, 2021
Princess Diana influenced the fashion world long before influencers were a thing. She rocked athleisure before it was cool and paved the way for the term “revenge dress.” And then there was the wedding dress of all wedding dresses. Aminatou Sow talks with the woman behind THAT dress: Elizabeth Emanuel. It turns out these stylistic choices, fun as they may have been, were not made in vain. We also hear from author and Diana style expert Eloise Moran, as well as GQ fashion critic Rachel Tashjian about what the princess was trying to say through her clothes.
Episode Transcript
Aminatou Sow
00:00:01
A long, long, long time ago, before princess Khloe Kardashian of Calabasas, coined the phrase revenge body, Princess Diana of Wales was stepping out and what is now deemed the revenge dress as her marriage to Prince Charles publicly fell apart. June 29th, 1994, was a watershed moment. Prince Charles was going on national television admitting that he had not been faithful to Diana in their marriage.
Interviewer
00:00:27
Did you try to be faithful and honorable to your wife when you took on the vow of marriage?
Prince Charles
00:00:34
Yes, absolutely.
Interviewer
00:00:36
And you were.
Prince Charles
00:00:37
Yes. Until it became irretrievably broken down, I suppose, having tried.
Aminatou Sow
00:00:45
The far reaching documentary about him was called Charles the Private Man The Public Role. And it was meant to celebrate the 25th anniversary of him being formally installed as the Prince of Wales. Admitting to the adultery was just a small part of it. That same evening, Diana arrived at a Vanity Fair fundraising event at the Serpentine Gallery in London and stole his thunder. She slinked out of a limousine looking sexy and free in a f*** you dress, off the shoulder, short, tight, chiffon and black, she was, as the kids say, a smoke show.
Eloise Moran
00:01:21
It was obviously shorter than her usual kind of dresses. It was off the shoulder, she was clutching onto this little Anya Hindmarch clutch, wearing a pair of Manolo Blahniks wearing these semi-sheer tights, which itself is kind of a Royal no-no and she also had her classic Sapphire Pearl Diamond choker around her neck.
Aminatou Sow
00:01:45
Eloise Moran is the creator of the Instagram account @LadyDiRevengeLooks. She's also writing a book called "The Lady Di Lookbook: What Diana was trying to Tell Us Through Her Clothes."
Eloise Moran
00:01:55
To me, that was kind of just this blending of her old life and her new life, and the choker kind of resembled, you know, she wasn't going anywhere, she was going to make it difficult for the royal family and she kind of wears it like a badge of honor. I mean, she took, she took over all the newspapers the next day.
News Anchor
00:02:14
How about that new look Diana? And do we like what that represents? It's kind of like she's saying, see ya royalty, see ya crown, see ya Charles.
Commenter
00:02:21
I think that's the cocoon. I think we're seeing the caterpillar turn into the real butterfly now. This is the shedding of the old image, this is coming on with the new image. And you know what...
Aminatou Sow
00:02:29
Diana's revenge dress arguably garnered more attention than Charles's interview. Great night for Diana. Terrible night for Charles.
Eloise Moran
00:02:37
Charles was obviously hoping that this could be his you know, I'm going to be honest, I'm going to admit to the world that I was a cheating so-and-so and she took over the headlines once again, which he actually hated when they were together, he hated how much attention she got. So I can imagine that really got under his skin, which is quite fab.
Aminatou Sow
00:02:58
And if that little black dress signified her exit from the marriage, then it's fair to say that her voluminous taffeta wedding gown symbolized her entrance into it.
News Anchor
00:03:10
The door opens, and for the first time we see in all its glory that dress.
Aminatou Sow
00:03:17
It was famously designed by Elizabeth Emanuel, along with her former husband, David.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:03:23
You know, those those years really, that David and I were together from, you know, in the eighties to the end of the eighties, really, it was a really interesting time. She became a fashion icon and we were there right in the early days and we could see her grow into that, and we were very lucky and very honored really to have been part of that and to have known her then.
Aminatou Sow
00:03:45
What might come as a surprise is that the Emanuels just happened into the gig.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:03:50
The first thing that happened was we had a request from Vogue saying they were doing a photographic session on a very famous person and they couldn't say who it was, and did we have anything romantic with a high neck that we could send over because we were just down the road from Vogue, which was good luck as well. So we sent over this little blouse and evidently Diana loved it and they used it for the photograph by Lord Snowdon, that was the very famous one, the pink blouse.
Aminatou Sow
00:04:21
Lord Snowdon had photographed members of the Royal Family for years and was at one time married to Princess Margaret, the queen sister. The photo Elizabeth is referencing was a formal portrait of the soon to be princess taken for Vogue magazine in 1980. In it, Diana is wearing the pink blouse with pearl earrings. She's all soft edges and pastel girlyness.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:04:42
And from that, she phoned us up and asked to come in. And I remember taking the call because I got her name wrong, so I didn't realize it was her. So when she did turn up, it was brilliant, you know, instantly we recognized her.
Aminatou Sow
00:04:56
Wait, so she called you herself? There was not an intermediary?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:05:00
No, no. It was really informal. She phoned us and everything was very informal then. I mean, people think, you know, getting involved with doing the royal wedding dress, it was all butlers and, you know, people sort of coming out and, you know, everybody being very polite and it was just very- we just spoke to Diana direct. It was just very easy. I mean, she used to go and make coffee for us and run around. I mean, I remember when she drove us to Buckingham Palace once, which was fun because everybody was doing a double take in the cars next to us when they saw Diana at the wheel, she was just really kind of great I mean, no airs and graces, she was just one of us. We were all pals sharing a big adventure.
Aminatou Sow
00:05:45
I love that image of Diana making them coffee or driving them to the palace. What a wild time for those three young people. It seems to me that whether they knew it or not at the time, Diana's collaboration with the Emanuel's would go beyond the wedding dress. It was the first major instance of Diana having some control of what she wore and how it would be interpreted. That dress proved to her that she could say something through her flowers that maybe she couldn't say any other way. I'm Aminatou Sow and this is the sixth and final episode of When Diana Met...Elizabeth Emmanuel.
Aminatou Sow
00:06:27
A few years before Elizabeth Emmanuel met Diana, she was studying in a talk fashion program in London, where she already had defined her style.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:06:34
So that was in '77, I graduated from the Royal College of Arts. Every designer there was amazing, so it was a big challenge to stand out from the crowd and my graduation show was made up of I suppose now it, well, it became the Emmanuel trademark look. It was froth and romance and lots of ruffles and I just, by luck, captured the moment of the time. The first person to wear one of those dresses was Bianca Jagger, she got on all the covers of the magazines, and suddenly our little business took off.
Aminatou Sow
00:07:14
Did you have a wish list of people you wanted to design for?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:07:17
Well, it was never a chance to have a wish list because it all happened so quickly it was like a tidal wave of people coming in. It was quite amazing, so very, very soon after we'd started the business, it seemed like everybody who was anybody wanted to come in and be dressed by us.
Aminatou Sow
00:07:34
How was your first impression after meeting her? Did you, did you realize that she was different than what you had imagined, or did it feel very natural?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:07:43
It felt very natural. She was just a young girl, and Diana was very shy, I mean, even when she came to see us, you know, she had that typical thing with her fringe where she'd look up from underneath her fringe and, you know, so that shyness came across. But I think, you know, because David and I were so young at the time and, you know, she- that sort of passed and she was just very interested to see our little studio and to see all the clothes we had hanging on the rail and eager to try things on.
News Anchor
00:08:16
In England, thousands of young women know exactly what they want their next evening dress to look like. It was worn Monday night by Lady, Diana Spencer, during her first formal appearance with Prince Charles since their engagement. Anne McMillan now has more on the dress and the woman the British newspapers are now calling Diana the Dazzler.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:08:35
One of the most well-known dresses we did in the early days was the black dress that she wore for her first public engagement with Prince Charles and that was just off the rail, I mean, that was an old sample we'd have hanging there and had actually been worn by somebody else, which of course, we told Diana, you know, had been worn by somebody at a charity event. But she tried it on and she looked so great and at the time, she was looking for something, you know, that was kind of grown up and for this evening event at the Goldsmith Hall, so we thought, well, it's black, that's fabulous. It's very sophisticated. We didn't realize black is a bit of a no-no. You know, it's generally reserved for funerals and deaths and things and also, it showed quite a lot of cleavage, which we thought was great. But, you know, if we really considered it, we may not have- we might have pointed that out to her, but she had great shoulders, great cleavage, and it was a very grown up dress and I think was quite transformational in that she suddenly became a grown up and a superstar and the press took notice and they started to follow her from a fashion point of view because it was a serious statement dress.
Aminatou Sow
00:09:47
Yeah. Did you have a sense when she came in to you looking for dresses, that there was a kind of protocol she had to follow or if there was someone, you know, who was guiding her a little bit saying, oh, maybe no black dresses, maybe no shoulders or, or was there really no- was there no attention paid to that and she was just picking whatever she liked?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:10:07
Well, I think if they had, they may have said something about the black dress before she wore it. So there wasn't anybody. It was just her and us and there was no nothing, even the royal wedding dress. We weren't given any advice or told what to do or, you know, I often say, well, we could have done it in pink polka dots, I mean, nobody told us what we had to do. It was kind of quite uh, challenging really. You know, we hoped and prayed everybody would like the dress, but most of all, that Diana would, but we had no guidance at all. Nothing.
Aminatou Sow
00:10:38
Wow. Do you remember when and how you were told that you were making the wedding dress?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:10:45
Yes, because Diana phoned us one day. I was in the middle of a fitting at the time with a client, and I was in the showroom and the phone was ringing and nobody was picking it up upstairs. So I thought, I better pick it up, stoped the fitting, picked up the phone and it was Diana and she said words to the effect of, Would you and David make my wedding dress? But you can't tell anybody, about it, it's got to be secret. And I remember the poor client wondering what was going on when I said, Oh, my brother's had a baby and I rushed outside. I rushed up to the workroom to- I couldn't wait to tell David and the team and there must have been a lot of stomping around on the ceiling and everything, because she must have heard all what was going on upstairs, but obviously couldn't tell the client, couldn't tell anybody. It was just a very, very exciting moment because we you know, we really hoped and we thought, wouldn't it be wonderful? And we dreamed that we might be asked to do her wedding dress, but we honestly thought, well, we weren't experienced enough because there was other experience, couture designers around at the time, and I think, yeah, it changed our lives, obviously.
Aminatou Sow
00:12:01
Coming up, how Elizabeth Emanuel and her team kept the details of Diana's wedding dress a secret in the middle of a media frenzy.
Aminatou Sow
00:12:20
There was so much speculation about the dress before it was revealed and, you know, I've read that it was the best kept fashion secret at the time. Was there any kind of snooping from journalists or people, you know, like kind of asking questions that shouldn't have been were you- and how, how did you navigate that as well?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:12:38
Well, I mean, it was a huge event. I think it was even bigger than the palace expected, the excitement of of the whole thing. We immediately had the world's press gathering outside and phoning constantly to ask us what the dress was going to look like. Because, I mean, we were put under intense pressure. As you can imagine. We didn't have PR, you know, fancy PR or anything like that. We were essentially on our own and I remember getting rung up by journalists saying, you know, unless we can find out some information, we'll get sacked and we'll have to pull our children out of school and, you know, it was terrible. But we couldn't say anything to anybody. They routed around in our bins to see if they could find scraps of fabric. So we left false trails. We put up blinds and things on the windows because they had rented the properties across the road to us and they had cameras pointed at us to see if they could see in through the windows. It was I mean, we had to have a sense of humor. I mean, it was like a constant battle because we just couldn't let any information out, no matter how hard they tried.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:13:50
And our girls were approached all the time, but they were fantastic because they were so loyal, we all were to Diana. We wanted this to be top secret and nobody to find out before the wedding, we even made a spare dress and I did that. I just thought, wouldn't it be awful if we had a break in even though we got security cards and the dress was stored in a metal safe, I just thought if we got broken into, it would be just so awful. So we made a spare dress. It's the dress that never was is what I call that dress now, because it was half finished waiting just in case and also maybe there could have been an accident or something, just wanted to be prepared. So it was like a shell of a dress we had waiting in the wings in case of anything.
Aminatou Sow
00:14:40
That sounds so stressful.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:14:42
It was very stressful, but it was an adventure.
Aminatou Sow
00:14:45
The trade craft involved in keeping this dress a secret as blowing my mind, a metal box, dummy fabrics. I kind of don't believe it, but of course I believe it. Gossip rags didn't start digging through celebrities trash yesterday, this has always been going on. Did Diana give any kind of guidelines? Did she have, you know, what- does she just say I trust you, come up with whatever you come up with or was there some like, you know, I want this kind of cut. I want this. I want drama, I want flair.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:15:13
No, nothing.
Aminatou Sow
00:15:14
How how involved?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:15:15
No, she, she was- nothing. She just trusted us. I mean, she liked the clothes that we did. She felt comfortable with us and that we would make the right decisions and so I came up with lots and lots of sketches for her and one day she came in with her mother, and David and I sat down on the floor with them and I lay out all the sketches and so they had a good look through. And also there was some of our samples on the rail at the same time of wedding gowns, but anyway, she tried on all the samples and there was this one that seemed to work so well with her, and it was a great silhouette and so we based the wedding dress on that sample, using it as a template shape, but we wanted to make it as difficult as possible for anybody to copy, so we layered on the embroidery, the pearls, the sequins and the train, of course, which was 25 foot long, then we decided that we would make it in ivory rather than white, although we did order both colors, we didn't want the suppliers to know what color we were using either. It was so secret, the operation, and the dress was made upstairs in our top attic workroom with just me and Nina, really. Nina was our seamstress who'd been with us since we started the company and Nina, she must have been in her late seventies, I think at that time, dear old Nina, at the end of the day, it was very hard to get the pattern off of her. She wouldn't part with it. She was hanging onto it as I tried to take it from her to hang up on the rail, she, she loved Diana, and Diana loved her as well. Diana loved everybody. She used to come when she came to the studio, she used to run upstairs to see the girls and say hello. So everybody felt very protective of her.
Aminatou Sow
00:17:05
What was that final fitting like when you knew that the dress was ready to go?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:17:09
The final fitting was in Buckingham Palace, and we rolled out the train and we held the mirror up for Diana, and it was the first time really any of us had seen it all- all together, and we could try the the veil on. It's- most people don't understand that the dress was designed to be seen under the veil, so it's so important, you know. It was like a mist of twinkling sequins, of stardust, magical, you know, say, it's funny because when you see it really, and when people have done copies and things on TV, they don't have the veil fully out, and it was so important from a design point of view from when I, when I came up with the idea that people should see her through this mist, a magical mist.
Aminatou Sow
00:18:02
This is where I confess that I am not the biggest fan of Diana's wedding dress, the oversize puff sleeves, the 25 foot train, the crinoline, so much crinoline, the meringue of it all, it is just so eighties and dramatic. But hearing Elizabeth tell the story of all the labor and care that went into making it made me look at that dress from a totally new point of view. The drama was warranted and the dress is stunning in its own way, you know, hindsight really is everything. I'm wondering if you can tell me about watching the wedding itself, what were your feelings on that day? Were you nervous? Were you excited? Like, how did the day unfold for, for you and for your team?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:18:46
It was just a really it was me and David. So we went to Clarence House- and Nina, sorry, and Rose, the four of us who went to Clarence House to to dress Diana and the bridesmaids, and so that was all excited. It was very early in the morning, and we had to drive past all the barricades with like thousands of people already there very early in the morning, and whilst we were getting everybody dressed, the TV was on and they were playing commercials and we could hear on the news, you know, the newscasters was saying, oh, it's fantastic, there's thousands of people out there all in anticipation of what this dress is going to look like, so we- the pressure was piling on us a bit because the moment had arrived, you know, but we also were focusing on getting Diana into her dress. It was very quiet, actually, if you can imagine the build up to that moment of actually putting her into the dress for the final time, it was really, could feel the pressure. I'd taken some glucose tablets and smelling salts in case any of us passed out or needed energy tablets or something.
Aminatou Sow
00:19:54
And of course, as usual, the woman had backup plan after backup plan.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:19:59
We made a spare skirt just in case Diana spilled something down her skirt. We'd made this over skirt that she could have just slipped over her head and nobody would have noticed. We made a silk parasol in case it rained, we- we were trying to be as prepared as possible in case anything happened, then we had to sew her into her train, so the train was secured by, it was like on a belt that went through the side of the dress and did up in the front underneath and that had to be safety pinned as well, even though there was a hook there, I suddenly panicked and thought, what, if it drops off halfway up the aisle, it would just be too awful. So everything was like double sewn into, safety pinned, and everything. And then after all of that, I remember standing on the steps with David, we were waiting for the carriage to arrive that would take her to St Paul's and then there was this- I suppose it must have been about five or six minutes of total silence, which I remember well, in contrast to all the rushing rounds, getting everybody dressed. And then we put her into the coach with her father, who's quite a big man, so we didn't, I think we really had to push that dress into the carriage for it to fit.
News Anchor
00:21:21
Even more eagerly awaited, the glass coach carrying Lady Diana and her father and the very first glimpse of the most closely guarded British secret, the wedding dress. As Lady Diana emerged from her carriage, the world watched as yards and yards of silk making up her train were laid in place.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:21:38
So when we arrived, we had to go in through one of the side doors in St Paul's and we were waited at the top of the steps for Diana to come up the steps so that we could arrange her dress. And we never actually saw any of the wedding first hand because after, you know, she started- she went on her walk down the aisle, we went and sat down. We were placed behind a big pillar which had a video screen on it, so we only see much of it and then halfway through we had we were taken back to Buckingham Palace to be prepared for when she arrived back for the photographs. It was such an incredible day. I try very hard to remember it all because it just went so quickly and it was, you know, this feeling of we really wanted, we really hoped everybody would like it. It had already been called a fairytale princess dress, and we hope it lived up to that.
Aminatou Sow
00:22:37
By all accounts, the dress lived up to the hype. They managed to craft that magical garment in addition to all the bridesmaids dresses in secret over the course of just three months, their whirlwind adventure with the new princess was over. Elizabeth could put the smelling salts away, kick off her shoes and relax.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:22:57
You know, when we got back to the studio after the wedding, we very soon had a phone call from Diana, which was amazing and completely unexpected, she was supposed to be on a honeymoon, but she called us from wherever she was and thanked us for making her dress and that meant the world to us. We were just blown away that she would even think of us at that time and it was the perfect end to a perfect day, really.
Aminatou Sow
00:23:24
There was a period of time after the wedding when Elizabeth and David didn't hear from Diana, and it generated more than a little angst for the designers, thanks to some tabloid gossip. Elizabeth's father, who was an investor in the company, stepped in.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:23:37
I was worried that maybe she was upset with us, and the papers started to remark that they hadn't seen her in an Emannuel dress for some time. And I was so worried that my dad phoned up Oliver Everett, who was her private secretary at the time, and just said, Look, is everything okay? Because Elizabeth's really worried, you know, in case they've done something to upset the princess. Anyway, not much longer. Afterwards, I got a phone call and it was Diana and asking if we would do her Middle East tour dresses. That was just so typical of she you know, she was just exploring going to other designers, you know, and when as soon as she heard that I was in a bit of a state about it, worried that we might have hurt or upset her, she was straight away on the phone, and in fact, she not only asked us to design her outfits for the tour, but also to take part in a documentary with her as well, where we were filmed at Kensington Palace discussing the designs with her. That was just very Diana, very caring.
Aminatou Sow
00:24:48
You know, you started working with her so early in her career that I, I would love to know what it was like for you to watch her, you know, the various stages of her personal style and what you think about how her looks evolved over time.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:25:03
We were very lucky to have met her right at the beginning as she was forming her own style. And in the beginning, all the dresses that we did for her were that very romantic, young looking dresses. Pale blue, pale pink. Little sequins. Lots of ruffles, lots of net. The black dress that we did was the big change, the big transformation. And the Middle East tour was very grown up. And by then we got the shoulder pads and everything. So we watched her go through all of that. But it was very interesting to see she had this innate sense of style and she developed a very, very strong style of her own. You could see she was a lot more involved with the designers.
Aminatou Sow
00:25:48
As Diana's sense of her own style evolved. She grew into a person whose individual look would influence what women were wearing, not just on the streets of London, but all over the world.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:25:58
In those days, it was all couture. So now with Kate, you know, it's different because it's you can get that look by going to the High Street, which is fabulous for everybody who wants to look like a princess. In those days with Diana, she had her things made for her. They were unique. But every time she wore something, you would see that look come out on the High Street. I mean, anything even it was a pair of tights, I remember her tights with a bow on the ankle, suddenly was in all the shops and she was followed by the press, she would make these statements, she realized that she could make a real statement by what she wore and you could see that in all, you know, when she went to the Serpentine and she wore that black dress that wasn't the black dress, but it was another black dress. And you could see her state of mind. It was a she developed a vocabulary of clothes, really. And she used that. She knew, you know, that if she put a necklace around her head instead of round her neck, that there'd be photographs. Where she wore a tuxedo, there'd be photographs. So she got to realize the power of dressing up and directing it. She, she had a real incredible sense of style.
Aminatou Sow
00:27:15
Coming up, Diana's very memorable fashion evolution.
Rachel Tashjian
00:27:28
To me, the most sort of misunderstood thing about Diana is that she did use clothing to communicate.
Aminatou Sow
00:27:37
Rachel Tashjian is the fashion critic at GQ. Rachel is one of those people who knows the difference between getting dressed and getting dressed. Getting dressed is serious business. I think it's fair to say Diana would agree with that.
Rachel Tashjian
00:27:52
She was a great semiotician of clothing, but there was so much more to what she was wearing than conveying a particular kind of message or feeling. I think she was a woman who dressed with great emotion and was really interested in glamor.
Aminatou Sow
00:28:09
Rachel has written at length about Diana style and how she used it in different ways as armor or to signal messages. We get more into that in a minute, but I want to get one thing clear first. Rachel's interest in Diana's fashion isn't just intellectual, it's personal.
Rachel Tashjian
00:28:25
When I was in high school, I took a picture of her Sam McKnight haircut into my hairdresser and had my hair cut in that way. I had a se- this is embarrassing, but I had a senior portrait taken and I brought in the Patrick Demarchelier photographs.
Aminatou Sow
00:28:42
Yes, I love that! Okay, now I have to see, I have to see this photo. This is amazing. What do you think, for you, it was that you noticed about her style that seemed unique, like what was catching your eye?
Rachel Tashjian
00:28:53
It's a couple of different things. I think one thing that we tend to overlook with Diana is she was 5'10 and she was very athletic. So it's- she just looks great in clothes, you know, like it's fun to look at her in gowns. It's fun to look at her in jeans. You know, she wears clothing in the way that, like Gianni Versace intended his clothes to be worn. She was very attentive also to just how everything was tailored and fit and I think very often when we look at her and think, oh, she looks so fabulous, like we're also seeing someone who is just very aware of how they appear.
Aminatou Sow
00:29:32
Rachel brings up the sad reality of the fashion industry. Diana had a figure that designers loved to dress, she was tall and slender. But talking about bodies feels forbidden. And in the case of Diana, who had one of the most scrutinized bodies in the world, it feels especially complicated. Even still, I'm bringing this up because it's instructive to talk about fashion and beauty are institutions that rely on conventional beauty standards and Diana fit those standards. I don't think we can ignore that. The complicated part for me comes in when we acknowledge that she didn't always feel comfortable in her body. I have a difficult time admiring Diana's eighties looks because of knowing that while rocking them, she was also struggling with an intense eating disorder and trying to protect herself from the world. I am still unpacking what loving Diana style means for me, especially knowing that public life came at such a high cost to her and she definitely responded to this public scrutiny through her outfit choices.
Rachel Tashjian
00:30:33
There was this moment where I would say like maybe in the mid or late eighties where she begins to enter this phase that's widely referred to as Dynasty Di, and that's when the you know, it's interesting because the press scrutiny is intensifying on her relationship and the clothing begins to seem more armorial, you know, it becomes harder, the shoulder pads become more intense and and there's a lot of beading. There's a lot of sequins. So there's, there's that sort of, you know, again, that sort of sense of meaning to it, but also, she's just deepening these relationships, again, with these designers and particularly with Catherine Walker, who was really someone who designed both these kind of working skirt suits for her and also, you know, did a number of gowns for her that are some of her most recognizable and memorable looks, and this was a, you know, a time where I think she was really trying to find her footing as a public figure and figure out what her purpose would really be.
Rachel Tashjian
00:31:40
And she begins to, again, professionalize this sort of life as a public figure. And, you know, she starts doing a lot of visits to hospitals and visiting sick children and that sort of thing and there was a sense of attentiveness to the textures and the types of things that she was wearing of her own, like she begins really considering this. So she had particular kinds of necklaces, for example, that she would wear, like when she was visiting the hospital so that children would have something to play with, and she was also very like, you know, she would talk to designers about making textures that were quite soft. And so when she was hugging children that she would feel good to hug. And so it's interesting that she has that level and that depth of relationship with, with a number of different designers who are sort of becoming these I don't want to say coconspirators, but these real partners in, in helping her sort of create this image that, again, is is quite, you know, professional.
Aminatou Sow
00:32:47
I went to a high school with a dress code, so I feel a particular kinship with anyone who tries to dress like an individual within the constraints they're given. I've always been amused by Diana's campy sweaters and cardigans, her own way of saying I'm a free spirit. Even before she was giving the crown the middle finger with her more provocative outfits, she was pushing the envelope on the royal dress code and subtle and not so subtle ways that have taken on greater significance with time. For example, consider a sweater emblazoned with one lone black sheep standing out from a flock of dozens. She wore it to cheer for Charles at a couple of his polo matches early in their relationship. Back then, when the public still thought they were very much a young couple in love, no one read anything into her choice of outerwear. Today, however, we have reframed it as a cheeky nod from Diana about how she saw herself within the royal family: the odd one out.
Rachel Tashjian
00:33:44
The primary lens through which we tend to examine fashion over the past five or six years is this is very semiotic reading. What is this person trying to communicate? And there's an entire cottage industry that has blossomed around this of designers working with stylists and working with celebrities to craft a very particular message, but, you know, I think she really pioneered that. When someone, you know, can't really give a lot of interviews in which they're explaining what it is that they think or feel, you know, clothing became a way for her to do that.
Aminatou Sow
00:34:19
Beyond the showstopping fashion moments that punctuated Princess Diana's royal engagements, it's her off duty style that continues to strike a chord. The spandex shorts and a Harvard sweatshirt, the nubby sweatpants she paired with cowboy boots to drop off her boys at school, she was doing athleisure well before athleisure, she was mixing high and low, she was passing off negligees as dresses, she was blurring the lines between menswear and women's wear, all the contradictions. She was so ahead of her time, so it's no surprise many of the pieces Diana inspired people to wear have come back around.
Rachel Tashjian
00:34:55
I mean, it's interesting like that- obviously, those images in their time were great fodder for the paparazzi, but those weren't necessarily considered to be her great style moments. And it's only, I think, with the rise of Instagram and this sort of appreciation that happens for a lot of 1990s paparazzi photographs that this has happened. And we live, of course, in the era of athleisure, and so to discover almost sort of vintage photographs of someone wearing a sweatshirt that says Harvard on it, you know, or Virgin Airlines and a pair of spandex like that looks so incredibly fresh, it captures what so many women how so many women are dressing right now, especially a sort of like influencer style or an Instagram kind of style.
Aminatou Sow
00:35:41
On the topic of Instagram. Let's go back to Eloise Moran and the Revenge Looks.
Eloise Moran
00:35:46
I started examining her in 2018. I was actually going through a breakup myself with a husband at the pretty young age of 25.
Aminatou Sow
00:35:56
If you're on Instagram, you've definitely seen photos of Princess Diana, and if you haven't, there's definitely something wrong with your algorithm. Anyway, what I'm saying is Diana has blown up on Instagram and Elouise is partly to blame (or thank).
Eloise Moran
00:36:11
So I watched a documentary on Princess Diana and I was kind of struck how connected I felt to her, which just in itself is a bizarre thing because she is a princess and there really should be kind of no relatability there. And then I've always worked in fashion, so I just started to do a little bit of research on her, I think I kind of innately have a researcher type of mind, and I came across all these incredible images of her in these outfits from the nineties and it just became so clear to me that it wasn't just kind of a new wardrobe. It was definitely this calculated series of looks, which I- just struck me immediately as a revenge wardrobe, because I could relate to kind of doing the same thing in my own breakup.
Aminatou Sow
00:37:01
When you start pouring through some of these, these pictures of her, you know, for your, for your Instagram feed, what kinds of narratives are emerging for you? Are there any recurring themes or they're images that you come back to over and over again?
Eloise Moran
00:37:13
People love the sportswear imagery and I love the sportswear imagery, not just kind of for what she's wearing, but because to me, that's where Diana just seems most free if she's jogging around Kensington Palace or she's out on the street having a run, I mean, how- could you imagine that being, it being so crazy, just kind of walking around Earl's Court or Chelsea wherever she used to work out and seeing this princess, not just the princess, but this kind of world famous icon, just jog past you. Just so surreal. So I love those moments because of the kind of free, liberating nature of them. And then in terms of narratives, just anything that's really obviously my hashtag is FUCC i, which means f*** you Charles and Camilla, for anyone who doesn't know. But I think I think people love the tone of that and they've loved that since the beginning because and just to clarify, everybody's like, do you really hate Charles and Camilla that much? And I mean, I could care less about Charles and Camilla. I don't think anybody really could, but I think it's what they stand for. I really believe everyone knows the Charles. Everyone knows the Camilla. And again, that doesn't have to be in a relationship that can be in kind of like your daily life and in your workplace, a lot of people are in toxic environments at work, so I love what they stand for. It's like the villains, you know.
Aminatou Sow
00:38:42
I you know, you are part of this huge, you know, I guess like nostalgia movement that's really like cataloging her looks on Instagram, like can you explain to me, like is it Instagram that is, you know, bringing back this resurgence? Is this just the nineties? Why are we seeing so much Diana-look fashion everywhere?
Eloise Moran
00:39:03
I don't think it's one thing in particular, but more this kind of whirlwind and thing that- things that lead into the other. The thing with Diana, which really I can only kind of speak to with, with confidence is A) You look at where we were in the early eighties and there was a huge kind of economic crash, and I'm speaking about specifically about the UK here, and Margaret Thatcher was in power, so it was kind of there was all the drama with the unions and that was the winter of discontent. Everybody was pretty unhappy and they looked to Diana as this kind of fairy tale princess to kind of take them away from all of that. She just represented this dream to so many, and they wanted to see this kind of happy story and this happy ending. And then you look to today and we're in a pretty bad state, you know, as, as the world, and I mean everything that's going on with kind of in America, across the globe, in Afghanistan, the environment, I mean, everything, it's bad. It's really bad. And I think this princess came along that my generation didn't really know. I didn't really know. And in a way, she still has that kind of same effect, you look to this person to bring you out of kind of the darkness of regular, everyday life. And so I think there's that again with the #MeToo Movement that was a few years ago, women coming forward and telling their stories. Well, she was kind of one of the early pioneers of that. She came forward and she told her story. So I think kind of her just being this early feminist hero and advocate helps to.
Eloise Moran
00:40:48
And then one last thing, sorry, I'm really going on, but Instagram is, it's such an interesting place, but it's also so one dimensional, and you look at the rise of the influencer and it's so boring, it's so dull, it's the same kind of person, and then I think Diana came along as this kind of posthumous influencer in a way, and she just has so much more to her than the kind of, Oh, I'm wearing clothing by this brand and like, doesn't my butt look so good? And she kind of gave us all this really deep story that we all connect with so much. And I just think that's so much interesting than the regular kind of boring stuff we see on Instagram everyday.
Aminatou Sow
00:41:29
I'm going to think about that for a while. The posthumous influencer, wow. I want to bring it back to the original showstopper, the wedding dress, the first prominent instance we have of Diana using the power of fashion to say something on the giant platform that is royal life. On July 29th, 1981, Elizabeth Emanuel, David Emanuel and Princess Diana stood on the steps of Clarence House right before Diana took the biggest leap of her life. How intimate that must have felt.
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:42:04
It was, well, it was just a few of us. It was David and myself and Nina and Rose. We went, you know, we had to keep the numbers down, But no it was it was awesome, really. It was a complete one off. It was such a special dress for reasons beyond just a nice design. It was, it's become iconic through you know, I often try and think what, what is it? Aside from the fact that Diana was such an iconic and wonderful then amazing person, you know, there have been other royal wedding dresses, but that one seems to have just a special significance. And I think part of it is because the photographs of the dress unlike any other royal wedding, it was so dramatic and not planned. I mean, we didn't plan that, but it needed that. And so, you see, my favorite one is, is of Diana on the steps of St Paul's with the wind catching her veil. You know, I think it's maybe we were just so young. We didn't think about things like that. Maybe we should keep the veil down secure. And, you know, but we just just did it. I had a lot of fun, you know, and Diana did, too. And I think that's why it was so magical. And also because of what happened afterwards, it was such a poignant moment that that one day was just happiness, it was- everybody was happy.
Aminatou Sow
00:43:34
Once in a lifetime. One, one gown. Yeah.
News Anchor
00:43:38
Their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales make their way back down the aisle to the tumultuous welcome, awaiting them at the steps of St Paul's.
Aminatou Sow
00:43:55
This moment strikes me for one big reason. Whether it's true or not, we've all internalized how little the royal family took care of Diana, not just on the day of her wedding, but in the days leading up to her wedding and afterwards. But here she is with people she knew, but barely, and they took really good care of her. They had her back. Listening to Elizabeth talk about this time, the magic, the beautiful veil, it's the most fairy tale thing I've heard about this narrative. She cultivated a little community of caring around her, and that's key. It's possible that people were drawn to her because she was a princess, but my sense is that people were protective of her and cared for her because they were so disarmed by how- just how normal she was. Normal, kind, and caring, someone not afraid to flout official royal protocol to show warmth. We tried to discover in the series who Diana really was, and I think what Elizabeth says next is kind of the closest we get to answering that question.
Aminatou Sow
00:44:55
Do you think that there are any misconceptions about Diana? Is there anything that you wish the public knew about her or anything you would like to clear up about who she was?
Elizabeth Emmanuel
00:45:04
Well, in a lot of the things like The Crown, particularly The Crown, she comes across as being unhappy all the time, whereas she wasn't. We didn't know there was anything going on, any of the issues that later came to light, we weren't aware of any of that. She was very upbeat and bubbly and fun to be with and adventurous and kind, and, you know, that's the side we saw, anyway, it was positive. There was no negativity in anything. She always, you know, looked like she was having a lot of fun.
Aminatou Sow
00:45:37
It's easy to envy powerful people's lives. But when I think of 19 year old Diana being catapulted onto the public stage and becoming the main character of the story, I can confidently say I wouldn't trade places with her for the world and not just because her life ended in tragedy. It's very, very hard to be a woman in public life. And I know some people believe that princesses and actresses and famous women choose this life, so they should deal with the consequences, but the price of admission seems way too high to me. The personal stuff, the family stuff, the emotions these women's experience in public are things that the rest of us get to experience in private. The dynamics are the same, but our audience is much smaller. I don't envy any woman in public life, but I am grateful to them. They enable those of us sitting at home to think about our lives, our relationships, our successes, our failures, and our choices with much lower stakes.
Aminatou Sow
00:46:37
The more time I spend thinking about Diana, the more I realize I actually don't know her at all. This note about her being fun and happy and kind, it really resonated with me. She made everyone around her feel special, people who knew her and people who didn't. She brought kindness and playfulness and whimsy into a drab royal world that had seemed aloof and elitist. This woman, whose life was marred by tragedy, whose life was known to the entire planet, and whose every misstep was documented by the press, she was much more than any of that. She was a mom. She was a humanitarian. She was a fashion icon who could rock a revenge dress. She had friends, secrets. She had fun. I thought I knew everything about Diana before starting this project, but I hadn't quite considered her joyfulness. I'm choosing to think of her as a happy person because all people, famous or not, get to be happy sometimes.
Princess Diana
00:47:36
Let's not wait to be prompted, but let us go out tonight, tomorrow, and the days that follow, and let us demonstrate our humanity.
Aminatou Sow
00:48:06
When Diana Met is produced by CNN Audio and Pineapple Street Studios. It's hosted by me, Aminatou Sow. Our producers are Mary Knauf, Tamika Adams and Erin Kelly. Our associate producer is Marialexa Kavanaugh and our editor is Darby Maloney.
Aminatou Sow
00:48:21
Mix and Original Music by Hannis Brown. Our fact checker is Francis Carr. Additional support for the series comes from Ashley Lusk, Kira Boden-Gologorsky, Alexander McCall, Lisa Namerow, Robert Mathers, and Molly Harrington.
Aminatou Sow
00:48:34
Executive producers for Pineapple Street Studios are Bari Finkel, Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky.
Aminatou Sow
00:48:40
Megan Marcus is the executive producer for CNN Audio.
