Queen Elizabeth's Supposed Style Curse

Something has been living rent-free in the back of royal watchers’ minds for decades, and with a landmark exhibition opening at Buckingham Palace this April, it’s time to say it again: Queen Elizabeth II’s wardrobe, acquired over 96 years of her life, may have carried a curse.

Or rather, her color choices may have signaled misfortune. Specifically…blue.

The Royal Family today reaches for blue constantly. As I’ve written before, the color reads as safe, trustworthy, and classically royal.

But whenever the late Queen Elizabeth II wore blue to a wedding in the 20th century, that marriage eventually ended in divorce. It’s the kind of stat that, once you see it, you cannot unsee.

Let’s examine the evidence today with some help from the Royal Collection Trust, which is gearing up to mark 100 years since the late Queen’s birth this spring…in style.

In May 1960, Princess Margaret married photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey in what was, at the time, the first royal wedding to be televised.

The Queen attended in a kingfisher-blue Norman Hartnell ensemble featuring a fitted lace bodice over silk and tulle and a full crinoline skirt (in blue silk faille with guipure lace across the hips and down the back). The look was finished with long blue moiré silk gloves.

Hartnell also offered the Queen two hats for the occasion; she chose the one trimmed with three large blue silk roses and black velvet bows. It was quite possibly, even probably, a nod to her sister’s full name: Margaret Rose.

The whole affair was photographed by Cecil Beaton and has been fixed in the visual record of the monarchy ever since. It was also, as it happens, the last time a full-length day dress was worn by attendees at a royal wedding in Britain. Margaret’s own Hartnell gown—Dior-influenced and deliberately unembellished so as not to overwhelm her petite frame—marked the same sort of modern turning point.

The marriage produced two children and lasted sixteen years before ending in 1978, making it the first divorce among senior royals in the modern era.

Then came the real hat trick: Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips in 1973: royal blue.

Prince Charles and Diana in 1981: lighter blue.

Andrew and Sarah Ferguson in 1986…cornflower? blue. Idk, I just know it is NOT cerulean.

All three couples would be divorced by the turn of the century: Anne in 1992, and both Charles and Andrew in 1996.

By contrast: Prince Edward and Sophie in June 1999: lilac. Still married. Incidentally, Edward and Sophie requested no hats on any of their wedding guests, which is why you see Elizabeth in this fanciful evening dress and fascinator combo—akin to something we’d expect to see on Camilla!

For Charles and Camilla’s own nuptials in 2005, the Queen wore ivory white.

Of course, in the US, this style choice would be considered deeply irregular, but it may have actually been the most gracious choice the Queen could have made for the wedding…especially considering that the couple had already weathered considerable public hostility. Anything but blue, Your Majesty!

For Peter Phillips’ 2008 wedding to Autumn Kelly, the Queen wore a silvery color that, depending on your screen brightness, looks suspiciously close to blue.

Peter and Autumn divorced in 2020. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions—but I’m going with…“that dress is bloo”.

For Zara Phillips’ wedding in 2011: peachy pink. Still ( :/ ) married to Mike Tindall.

To attend the televised wedding of Prince William and Catherine that same year: yellow.

And that of Prince Harry and Meghan in 2018: lime green. No divorce in sight (despite what the darkest corners of the internet might be hoping).

Then there are the two that complicate the narrative rather usefully. For Princess Eugenie’s wedding in October 2018, just months after Harry and Meghan’s, Elizabeth wore pale blue. Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank remain married…for now?

And for Beatrice’s intimate, lockdown-era wedding in 2020, the Queen wore what can only be described as light aquamarine. Is this considered blue, or green? The people need to know; the fate of a royal marriage depends on it!

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We are, apparently, still in the monitoring phase for this match—though reports surfacing this week about ~distance~ in the marriage suggest some watchers have already started the clock.

None of this is, of course, predictive. It was, however, remarkably consistent for a time. Did Elizabeth II know exactly what she was doing? Was she trying to be the couple’s “something blue” for a time before realizing that the choice was backfiring in spectacular…fashion? Did her choice of blue, then, eventually signal a private, even subconscious recognition of which marriages she expected to endure…and those she perhaps did not?

Or is this simply the kind of pattern the human brain invents when it needs to make sense of institutional failure?

The ensemble that started it all—the blue Hartnell piece worn to Margaret’s 1960 wedding—will soon be on public display as part of the most extensive exhibition of the late Queen’s wardrobe ever staged.

Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style opens at the King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, on April 10th. Organized by the Royal Collection Trust, it features approximately 200 items, roughly half of which have never been publicly displayed. The exhibition will trace ten decades of dress from Elizabeth’s infancy through her final years: formal and ceremonial attire alongside the off-duty clothes most people have never seen.

Along with other beloved designers, Norman Hartnell’s name runs through this exhibition like a thread. He designed Elizabeth’s own wedding dress when she married Prince Philip in 1947, and their collaboration continued for decades.

His sketches appear in a new companion publication from the Royal Collection Trust: Queen Elizabeth II: Fashion and Style , out in the UK on Thursday, March 26th (and in the US on May 4th). It’s authored by Caroline de Guitaut, Surveyor of The King’s Works of Art, with a foreword by Dame Anna Wintour; interviews with designers Christopher Kane, Erdem Moralioglu, and Richard Quinn; and an essay by Amy de la Haye, Professor of Dress History and Curatorship at London College of Fashion.

The book draws on new archival research and reunites some of Hartnell’s original sketches with the finished pieces, revealing in the process just how closely Elizabeth was involved in every stage of her wardrobe’s creation and documentation. Sometimes annotating design sketches herself, she was building a unique record of her reign with every stitch. Elizabeth’s fashion archive comprises around 4,000 pieces and has formally entered the Royal Collection—making it the largest surviving dress collection of any female British sovereign or consort.

Queen Elizabeth’s Supposed Style Curse

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