Emma Corrin as Princess Diana on The Crown, wearing a Liberty print dress
Credit: Netflix
I’ve always been unbearably nosy about other people’s wardrobes. If I spot someone in a beautiful dress or a vintage coat I immediately want to know what else they have hanging in their closet (invite me to dinner parties at your peril). Visiting stately homes has never held much allure, given the best bit – the dressing room – is usually either empty or roped off.
That’s why I think Chiara Menage has one of the best jobs in London. A self-described vintage clothes detective, her best police work to date has been hunting down pieces for the most recent season of
Ever since ‘The Crown’, Season 4, bowed on Netflix, the stylesphere has been filled with strange declarations of desire for the pie-crust collars, novelty sweaters, puffed-sleeve floral frocks and 1980s power jackets immortalised by Princess Diana as she ascended to stardom and Princess Anne as she issued caustic asides.
Followed pretty much immediately by queries on how to “get the look.”
Such fantasies are rarely easy to fulfill, involving, as they would, time travel or at least fruitless searching through the pages of Vogues British or American and the social media posts of influencers. But this time around there is actually an answer.