In a wide-ranging interview, Picardie discusses everything from the glamour of Queen Mary to the ways Kate Middleton is continuing sartorial royal traditions established for over 100 years.
Vanity Fair: What inspired you to write Fashioning the Crown?
Justine Picardie: When I met Queen Elizabeth II, it really was the most extraordinary experience, because she really was the most famous person in the world. And yet there was something so modest about her.
I was also fascinated, aside from that, by the story of Hardy Amies. When I was working for Vogue in the late ’90s and early noughties, I’d met Sir Hardy Amies as he was by then, and he was incredibly discreet and didn’t really talk about his wartime experiences, but I did know that he’d worked in espionage during the Second World War. So, I would say it was the combination of those two encounters. So first, with Hardy Amies before his death. And then when I met the queen and asked her about Hardy Amies.
She kind of gave you an answer in her own discreet way…
Yes, which was extraordinary because she was such a discreet person. And for her to say being a couturier is very good cover for being a spy, and that she heard he was very good at garroting Nazis. I mean, it was just so unusual for her to say anything like that. Usually, her silence spoke louder than words, really. So, for her to say those things just seemed so striking.
Going back, can you tell me a little bit about the fashion and glamour of Queen Mary? We think of her as so staid, but you posit she was actually quite a fashion plate.
I became absolutely obsessed with Queen Mary when going through the archives and reading more about her. Hardy Amies was hugely influenced by having seen her, as he said, wearing emeralds and emerald green lamé on her way to the East End of London in the morning… And Coco Chanel, who I’ve written a biography of, was also hugely impressed by Queen Mary and said she just is the most majestic and one of the best-dressed women in the world. So, for the combination of Coco Chanel and Hardy Amies to see Queen Mary in that way, it is so interesting.
She was, I think, hugely influential on the young Princess Elizabeth, who spent a lot of time in her childhood with her. [During World War I], such was the anti-German feeling that the royal family no longer wanted to be so associated with their German ancestry. So, it’s Queen Mary’s husband, George V, who says, “Okay, we’ve got to change our name,” and they become the House of Windsor. But it’s at that same time that Queen Mary also says that royal women need to wear British textiles and be dressed by London dressmakers. It was Chanel who said, “Fashion fades, style is eternal.” And that style that Queen Mary established, I can see it’s still there today.
Queen Mary with King George V and the future King Edward VIII.
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