{The Crown and "That" Dress}

Diana on the left; Emma Corrin in "The Crown" on the right

For me, the brightest star of The Crown television series on Netflix is its head costume designer, Amy Roberts. I've written for years, including in The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding, about the design of Diana Spencer's wedding gown, so I appreciate Amy's story of re-creating the legendary gown that appeared "on screen" for only a few poignant moments.

Emma Corrin in "The Crown," left; Princess Diana, right

When The Crown first announced "that gown" would be part of its Season Four storyline, their Twitter account posted: "Emmy award-winning costume designer Amy Roberts wanted to capture the same spirit and style of David & Elizabeth Emanuel’s original design, without creating a replica for Emma Corrin."

Emma Corrin on "The Crown"

Here is what journalist Lela London wrote in Forbes:

The second Diana took her vows in a gown with a 25-foot train, it became one of the most iconic wedding dresses in history.

The silk taffeta gown was hand-crafted by David and Elizabeth Emanuel at the time, and The Crown’s costume department consulted with the Emanuels to ensure the replica dress—worn for just a few seconds in the series—was as similar as possible. The original designers even gave them its patterns.

"We were filming the scene when you first see her in the wedding dress—I think it was Lancaster House in London—and I had a team of about ten people helping me put it on, because it's massive," Corrin told British Vogue.

"I walked out and everyone went completely silent. More than anything else I wear in the series, it’s so…it’s her."

Emma Corrin on "The Crown"

Vogue shared a background story of creating the real gown by David and Elizabeth Emanuel. And read more details and entertaining anecdotes in my book The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding.

 

{Magick Bridal Slippers}

My article, "Magick Bridal Slippers" about the lineage of shoes in wedding folklore, is published in the Summer issue of SEASON magazine...(page 64)...and I've reprinted it for you below. Enjoy!

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MAGICK BRIDAL SLIPPERS

After the vows, hymns and presentations, the princess bride—in handcrafted silk duchess satin slippers with 542 hand-knotted mother-of-pearl sequins, low fluted heels, decoratively hand-carved suede soles, and a lace- and pearl-trimmed heart at the toe—stepped out into a sun-lit, adoring world.

   

Lady Diana Spencer’s bridal gown designers, Elizabeth and David Emanuel, chose London shoe designer Clive Shilton to create her fairy-tale wedding slippers—completely handmade in the English tradition of royal brides with silks custom dyed to match the dress.

Indeed, shoes and feet have an ancient and mystical lineage in the history of weddings. Shoe historian Cameron Kippen writes: “Mythology and folklore of many cultures link the foot and sex together.” Consequently, since numerous wedding rituals are based on symbols of fertility, shoes appear often! “Throwing shoes after someone setting out on a journey was long thought to bring good fortune, so throwing a shoe at the bridal couple—with procreation such an important part of that union—was taken to wish them a fulfilling life together,” the historian continued.  The later custom of tying old shoes to the bridal carriage or car may be a variation on this onetime good-luck practice.

“In accounts of wedding customs throughout ancient times,” Kippen declares, “it was widely considered lucky to wear something borrowed. A common belief was that the bride would enjoy the same luck as the previous owner if the shoes of another happy bride were worn.” (And the good-luck superstitions extended to the groom by wearing old boots loaned to him for his wedding.)

There’s a heritage of shoe rituals found in cultures around the world: “The ancient Inca Indians of Peru were not considered married until they exchanged sandals. In Northern Italy, the old custom was to have everyone try on the bride’s shoe, just like Cinderella. In Hungary, the groom drank to his bride out of her wedding slipper. In Finland, the married couple was accompanied to the bridal suite by the whole family; the mother would not let the groom go to his bride until he had given her a pair of shoes. In China, the bride tossed her red shoes from the rooftop to ensure happiness for the couple.”

Many of today’s stylish brides put as much attention on the selection of their shoes as they do on finding the perfect gown. Perhaps it’s not simply to satisfy their fashionable palate, but also to follow some divination of ancient rituals promising good fortune—including dreams of being a princess! ~  

[This summer marks the 20^th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. My book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: For Betteror Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding, is quoted in various worldwide commemorative publications honoring the princess.]

Princess Diana's wedding slippers preserved at Kensington Palace

{20th Anniversary - Excerpt No. 3}

Continuing our celebration of Princess Diana's contribution to weddings and all the feminine mythology the costumes of that storied ceremony entails! During this memorial summer of the 20th anniversary of her death, I'm sharing excerpts from my book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding.

{excerpt from}

Chapter Three: "A Whiter Shade of Pale"

By the time Diana’s wedding came along, the notion of “virgin white” had not been completely swept away with the sexual revolution. There was still an underpinning of deeply embedded beliefs about the “rules” of wearing subtle shades of white—ivory, cream, beige—inferring one’s virginal status. “Symbolism of color in the bride’s wedding dress seems almost universal,” wrote historian Donald Clay Johnson in 2003. “In Europe and North America, white, symbolizing ‘purity,’ remains the preferred color, a reflection of the pervasive power of English Victorian society to impose its value system throughout many parts of the world.”

Women’s studies scholar Colleen Denney pointed out the sexual ambiguity of Diana’s gown, following in the “fairy-princess ideal” of nineteenth-century royal brides. Denney considered the über-feminine, fluffy, virginal-like gowns of both Princess Alexandra and Princess Diana—two Princesses of Wales marrying almost 120 years apart—representative of “their newly confined circumstances.” The crinoline-style gowns portrayed the “insistence on the continuity of history and tradition, an ever-present cultural memory, and the demands of royal protocol.”

Nonetheless, ruffley-romance was the new again, Vogue-approved fashion of the early 1980s—whether a “throwback” or not. And for these times, the look was fresh, light and feminine—and what Diana Spencer truly wanted to wear. It seems her lack of worldliness and attraction to fairy-tale romance actually worked for her when selecting the designers and her gown. Diana made her choices before she was so wrapped up in an emotional struggle to please everyone—the palace, the public, the media. She was guided by her own intuition as well as the two designers’ vision where silhouette, color, accessories, length of train, and veil style were created to compliment the woman, the setting, perhaps its symbolic place in history, but, definitely, the heart’s desire of the bride.

Since we know now that Diana’s life had a broader arc, was her queenly, Victoria-inspired, femme-femme bridal silhouette a key ingredient in a powerful “modern mythology” being created? Was it all part of some Divine Feminine plan to help usher in a new spirit stirring the cosmos as we approached the end of an old, tired patriarchal millennium?

It may always remain a heavenly secret, but this query beckons. What, indeed, becomes a bridal legend most? An iconic white gown that truly captures her essential self, yet stands out in some fashionably-designed, breathtaking way; where the woman is the star, the gown only her complement, and we are left with a feeling that a goddess just entered the room. ~

[Excerpts from The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding, pages 42, 44 and 51.]