How Queen Diana would have ruled coronation fashion

It’s difficult moving on from the coronation of King Charles III without wondering what might have been. If Queen Elizabeth had not endured an annus horribilis in 1992 and Charles and Diana had remained married, what would Queen Diana have looked like on the throne?

Queen Camilla has gently acquired the gravitas enabling her to carry off British designer Bruce Oldfield’s wide-shouldered ivory silk coronation gown but despite evolving from a scruffy, country lady of the manor, straight from a Jilly Cooper novel, her fashion impact pale’s beside Diana’s lasting legacy.

“Princess Diana was very confident in her personal style, even though I don’t think she was a self-confident person,” says Australian fashion designer Jayson Brunsdon. “She certainly knew how to send a message with fashion. Look at the famous black revenge dress. Diana would have known how to send a message at the coronation.”

Brunsdon met Diana in Sydney following her divorce from Prince Charles, when she opened the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in 1996. During their styling session Diana refused to wear Chanel shoes because of the interlocking Cs, which could represent Charles and Camilla.

Brunsdon’s dream outfit for Princess Diana at the coronation was worn by Gigi Hadid at the autumn 2023 Versace runway show in Los Angeles.Credit: Getty

“She had been taken under the wing of Liz Tilberis [then editor of Harper’s Bazaar] who did offer guidance, but Diana had already found her footing as a rule breaker with fashion. She knew what worked and because she was so tall and athletic, she could get away with almost anything.”

“Even her owning a pair of Chanel shoes that she could never wear sent its own message.”

To send a message at the coronation, Brunsdon thinks Diana would have bucked tradition and gone with a European label like Versace. Diana became friends with designer Gianni Versace, who was murdered in 1997, after wearing one of his blue gowns on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar in 1991.

“I can’t imagine her in British designers like Christopher Kane or Molly Goddard. She would have gone offshore,” Brunsdon says. “A Versace skirt suit would stand out against all the colourful Temperley dresses at the coronation.”

“She might have gone for a bit of Alexander McQueen tailoring.”

Alexander McQueen is a favourite of Princess Catherine, who commissioned an ivory silk dress with embroidered rose, thistle and shamrock motifs from the label’s creative director Sarah Burton for the coronation. Catherine wore a McQueen dress by Burton for her 2011 wedding to Prince William and owns an array of blazers in a rainbow of colours by the label.

If rifling through the racks at Alexander McQueen, Brunsdon would expect Diana to be more adventurous than her daughter-in-law.

“Kate’s style is very studied. Her approach to royal dressing is in the tradition of the Queen Mother. She has dug into the royal tradition and mostly dresses like it’s 1940.”

Media personality, model and former Australian Women’s Weekly fashion editor Deborah Hutton also remembers Diana as a fashion rule-breaker.

“Diana broke the boundaries and refused to be hemmed in by what you should do according to all that royal etiquette,” Hutton says. “We remember it so powerfully because we were all a part of her incredible transformation from when she was seen as a daggy teenager, to her becoming a strong fashion presence.”

“She grabbed her life by the balls.”

Hutton met Diana at the Sydney Opera House in 1988 when she hosted the Bicentennial Wool Collection alongside Michael Parkinson. The show featured designers such as Jean Muir, Bruce Oldfield, Versace, Claude Montana, Donna Karan, Kenzo, Missoni, Sonia Rykiel and Oscar de la Renta.

“She already had such presence and I think it would have evolved,” says Hutton, who was born in 1961, the same year as Diana. “As you get older you become more confident in your choices. I think that she would have been like Jackie O who found her uniform with chic, fitted jackets and suits.”

While Hutton expects that Diana would have leaned into colour, Brunsdon has a different vision, that defies Camilla and Catherine’s matching shades of white for the coronation.

“Diana’s suit definitely would have been black,” he says. “She would still be sending messages.”

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