In Netflix’s The Crown Camilla becomes a style star
The would-be monarch’s style evolves as she secures her official role in the royal family.
The future queen wore granny panties and a large brassiere. To get Camilla Parker Bowles just right for The Crown, which returned to Netflix on Thursday last week, costume designer Amy Roberts hunted for high-waisted comfy underpants and stuffed a bra with birdseed for the appropriate heft and shape.
The audience never sees what’s underneath Camilla’s clothes; the intimates are meant to help actor Olivia Williams disappear into the role while creating a bountiful silhouette.
“I thought, ‘We’ll never get anywhere without the bosom and Olivia doesn’t have the bosom,’ ” says Roberts.
“Everything must be right, from the length of the skirt to make you feel frumpy or awkward, or high-waisted jeans that give you a bit of a tummy.”
This season, more of Camilla’s fashion will make it to the screen in a storyline about her path to legitimacy. By the December series finale, Camilla has secured her official role in the royal family with her marriage to Prince Charles – and put herself on the road to becoming queen. Along the way, she gets her own version of a fashion glow-up.
As Camilla transforms, her hair turns from an unruly mop to a more coiffured affair. She goes from hiding behind her bangs to showing more of her face. The application of her Dusty Springfield eye and frosted lipstick becomes more precise. (Last season, Williams would smudge her fresh mascara with her balled-up fists.)
Now, in addition to her usual jeans and tweed riding-style jacket – and what Roberts calls “disgusting old sweaters” from op shops – Camilla gets to wear gowns.
“She suddenly comes into her own in her outfits,” Roberts says.
On set, turning Williams into Camilla took 45 minutes to an hour. She spent nearly as long in the makeup chair as Elizabeth Debicki did to become global style icon Diana.
“Camilla is my favourite transformation,” says Cate Hall, the show’s hair and makeup designer.
“When you look at Camilla, she’s not perfect. She doesn’t manufacture her image in a way that feels like she spends hours in front of a mirror worrying about every tiny detail. She’s like those of us that just chucks a load of mascara and eyeliner on, whacks a lipstick on, whacks a blush on. I feel like she’s a really real woman.”
The first episode of the new season shows Camilla in a black evening dress, giddy as she celebrates her 50th birthday at a black-tie garden party thrown by Charles.
“My heel’s stuck,” she says, laughing while struggling to get her pump out of the grass.
Williams felt herself become Camilla when she put on the wig. If she wasn’t wearing it, she says, security staff on set wouldn’t recognise her.
As for her style upgrades, Williams had one request once Camilla started spending more time with Charles at his Highgrove residence.
“I did ask that the men’s lamb’s-wool sweaters that I was wearing might not have visible moth holes any more,” she says.
The extent of the actual Queen Camilla’s interest in style is up for debate. Royal fashion expert and former Wall Street Journal reporter Elizabeth Holmes says Camilla did not use fashion to brandish her image in her earlier days. Holmes’s 2020 book, HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style, features four women: Princess Diana; Queen Elizabeth II; Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex; and Catherine, now the Princess of Wales. No Camilla.
Given the potential for harsh comparisons to the glamorous Diana, Holmes says, “it makes all the sense in the world to me that Camilla would not try to play that game.”
Angela Levin, author of Camilla: From Outcast to Queen Consort, finds the portrayal of Camilla in The Crown to be “revolting” in its substance. She doesn’t like the style much either, saying that in real life Queen Camilla dresses in smart outfits with King Charles III in mind. It’s not about dressing for only herself, Levin says. There’s duty involved.
“A lot of women go through all the shops and find something they love – she wants Charles to be pleased with it and she wants to look appropriate,” says Levin.
“When he wears a kilt, she will have a suit on, a skirt just over the knee and a jacket.”
Personal style still comes into play, she says, usually with Queen Camilla’s choice of millinery.
“A hat, often with something a bird’s left behind on the top of it,” she says. “A feather.”
Queen Camilla rewears dresses and isn’t known for taking many style risks. But she appears to be growing bolder in her choices, as fashion comes with the job of being queen, Holmes says.
She cites Queen Camilla’s coronation gown created by Bruce Oldfield, a designer once favoured by Princess Diana, which showed a little whimsy with its two rescue dogs embroidered on the bottom and insects included in the floral motif.
In recent months she has worn a caped deep-blue Dior gown for a state banquet at the Palace of Versailles that won raves from royal-fashion watchers.
She sported a leopard-print dress for a reception at Buckingham Palace, and she has been spotted in a gem-toned silk dress with a peacock print.
She regularly wears jewels from the royal collection, some of the same pieces Queen Elizabeth II once favoured, drawing a connection between herself and the former monarch.
Rachel Bowie, co-host of the podcast Royally Obsessed, was delighted to see Queen Camilla in Barbie pink – a choice Bowie also views as a nod to the often brightly dressed Queen Elizabeth II.
“We’re so used to being so excited about what Kate is wearing, or Meghan is wearing, or even the queen,” she says. “Camilla is starting to give us that in her own way.”
The Wall Street Journal
The second half of season six of The Crown streams on Netflix December 14.