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4 min read<\/p>\n4 min read<\/p>\n
The first time I met Queen Elizabeth II<\/a>\u2014who will always be \u201cthe Queen\u201d for me\u2014I was lost for works, as so many people were in those circumstances. She was accustomed to this; indeed, my husband, who had known her since childhood, said that even the most sophisticated individuals often \u201ctalked gibberish\u201d when they were introduced to the Queen. As a consequence, she tended to ask simple questions, but on this occasion, her generic opener\u2014\u201cHave you come far?\u201d\u2013would not help give that she already knew the answer. We had been invited to dinner at Balmoral<\/a>, just a few miles from my husband\u2019s family home in the Scottish Highlands, and when the Queen greeted me, I somehow managed to curtsey<\/a> without falling over, while feeling utterly awestruck by the power of her presence. Awe is not conducive to conversation; like countless others before me, I became tongue-tied and inept.<\/p>\n Designer Hardy Amies, who worked with Queen Elizabeth II and had also served as a senior intelligence officer for the Special Operations Executive during World War II.<\/p>\n I had not grown up in a monarchist household\u2014on the contrary, my father espoused Marxism during my 1960s childhood; not had I become an ardent royalist in adulthood. Insofar as I ever thought about the Queen, it was as a reassuringly consistent, grandmotherly figure in the background of our national life, although marginal to my own day-to-day existence. Yet suddenly here she was before me, dazzling in an array of diamond jewelry and an exquisitely embroidered silver evening gown, the magnificent manifestation of her own adage, \u201cI have to be seen to be believed.\u201d The queen was in her early eighties at the time, but her age seemed immaterial. Instead, I was struck by the glamour and grace of her appearance; by her fine, pale skin and the sparkling blue of her eyes that matched her sapphire earrings<\/a>; and by the way she looked patiently at me while I stumble through an attempt at small talk. At the end of that memorable evening, I felt that the Queen was possessed of her own unique style, embodying majesty, mystery, and myth. If these are the fundamental qualities of a successful monarch, then our limited conversation was almost irrelevant: her sartorial splendor <\/a>and superb jewels did the talking.<\/p>\n Hardy Amies with Caroline Ponsonby in 1958. Of Amies, Queen Elizabeth once said, \u201cOf course, it was excellent cover for a spy to be a couturier.\u201d<\/p>\n Our second meeting also took place at Balmoral, this time in a remote mountain bothy on the estate. My husband was shooting with a royal party that day, and the Queen and several others, including me, joined them for lunch. She was surrounded by her favorite corgis<\/a>; fortunately, I am fond of dogs, and such was their steadying influence that I was able to speak in complete sentences, although still rather stilted by shyness. By this point, I had published a biography of Coco Chanel, and had also being intrigued by the little-known story of Sir Hardy Amies, one of the Queen\u2019s former couturiers, who had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel during the Second World War. I mentioned to her that my mother had known him, and that I had met him several times before his death in 2003, while I was working at Vogue. And then I pluck up courage to ask her about Amies\u2019 role as a senior intelligence officer for the Special Operations Executive, liaising with the Belgian Resistance as an undercover agent. The Queen looked at me, with the merest hint of a raised eyebrow, and said, \u201cAh yes, those rumors that he was very good at garroting Nazis.\u201d I had not, in fact, heard any such tales, but tried to mirror her exemplary composure, as a brief silence fell between us. \u201cOf course, it was excellent cover for a spy to be a couturier,\u201d she continued; an observation that implied some knowledge of the ways in which clothes can be used to conceal, rather than reveal, the secrets of those who make and wear them.<\/p>\n Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict, and Couture<\/p>\n![\"Hardy\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fb54a7a5-86b4-4dcb-99f2-a38285792d32.jpeg\" "\\"Hardy\\"")
M. McKeown\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"Hardy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0bfdba62-08b9-4690-972e-c8950c380769.jpeg\" "\\"Hardy")
Evening Standard\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
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