It was meant to be a year of celebration, and that’s certainly how it began.
Earlier this year, the U.K. marked Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee with a series of international and local events that culminated in a four-day weekend of parades, installations and special performances, one of which even featured the monarch herself.
The 96-year-old queen — who’d already revealed her inner thespian by appearing alongside Daniel Craig in a James Bond-themed skit during the London 2012 Olympics — gave her public an encore.
She appeared in a comedy sketch with Paddington Bear that was filmed at Buckingham Palace and broadcast on the final day of the jubilee weekend celebrations. In it, the queen shows Paddington that she, too, carries a large marmalade sandwich (in her Launer handbag, rather than her hat).
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“For later,” she says, flashing her big smile.
It was a moment of intimacy — and grace — during the four-day weekend in early June that was not easy for the increasingly frail monarch. She’d been suffering from mobility issues over the previous 12 months and had recently begun to use a walking stick in public.
She gave some of the long-planned weekend celebrations a pass, including a thanksgiving service to mark her 70 years on the throne, and an appearance at Epsom Derby.
It would later be revealed by Gyles Brandreth — whose biography of the queen, “Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait,” was published in December — that the monarch had been suffering from bone cancer in the months leading up to her death on Sept. 8.
Despite the pain, discomfort and periods of convalescence over the past few years, she was determined to carry out her duties, and keep the promise she made on her 21st birthday in 1947 (when she was still Princess Elizabeth) to serve Britain and the Commonwealth countries.
“I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong,” the princess said in a radio broadcast from South Africa.
Such was her work ethic that two days before she died, the queen asked her 15th prime minister, Liz Truss, to form a government, although it would later turn out to be the briefest in British history.
The queen’s death at Balmoral, her beloved estate in the Scottish Highlands, brought an end to the jubilee celebrations, and to the second Elizabethan era in Britain. It also shined a light on the profound impact she had across multiple cultures, countries and industries, including fashion.
Vivienne Westwood, a long-reigning anti-establishment figure and a symbol of Punk, was quick to pay tribute to the late monarch, declaring that she “holds the country together. She’s a figurehead of international diplomacy. I think it’s so important that our royal family is hereditary, that family members learn diplomacy by osmosis and develop a sense of duty to our country, and to the world. We all owe her our gratitude.”
The British Fashion Council also acted quickly, reorganizing the spring 2023 show calendar around the queen’s funeral on Sept. 19, and urging designers to postpone or tone down events and presentations in keeping with the country’s 10-day period of mourning, and grim national mood.
Many London Fashion Week designers rejigged their shows to pay tribute to the late queen, including her favorite flower, lily of the valley, in their shows, or holding a minute of silence.
Richard Quinn, who had a special connection with the queen, opted to stage two shows, one dedicated to her entirely and the other a spring 2023 outing. The queen had only ever attended one London Fashion Week runway show, and it was Quinn’s in 2018, when she handed him the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design.
A hastily, but expertly, assembled 22 tribute looks opened Quinn’s show on the day following the funeral. They took the designer and his staff 10 days to make and Quinn said they stitched through the night as they watched the funeral on screen.
The designer draped his space with black curtains and carpet and added TV screens featuring video footage of the queen. Models wore veils — lacy, dotted or embellished with beads — that draped over the black clothing.
“We wanted it to be appropriate for the time,” said Quinn, crediting the queen for the brand’s success. “It’s how everyone first knew us and it will always be a part of our journey and history.”
He described the late monarch as “100 percent a fashion icon.”
The word icon is hackneyed, especially in fashion, but in the case of the queen, it was fitting.
Joanne Yulan Jong, an ESG sustainability and brand consultant, and a former designer for companies including Giorgio Armani, argues that icon-making takes decades and the queen managed it, crafting a distinctive look and image that’s embedded in the collective consciousness.
Jong said her silhouette — the coat, shift dress, tailored shoulder, round neckline and pearls — became as distinctive as the Chanel No.5 bottle, Birkin handbag or Audrey Hepburn’s look in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
She was not a trendsetter, the queen had a strong sense of style, and had long been an inspiration to designers.
Solange Azagury-Partridge, who’s known for her sculptural, colorful and sometimes risqué designs, described the queen as her favorite muse.
“No one has better jewels than Queen Elizabeth,” said the designer, whose blue-and-white Regalia collection was inspired by Her Majesty.
The late queen was also a great image-maker, using her clothes, accessories and trove of old and new jewels to telegraph messages at home, and abroad.
Susanna Cordner, archives manager at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, said the queen always had something to say with her jewelry.
In April 2020, for her TV address in response to the COVID-19 crisis, the queen wore a turquoise brooch. “Many noted that the gemstone is considered to represent protection and hope in many cultures,” Cordner said.
She added that the three-strand pearl necklace the queen often wore for televised addresses and live appearances was given to her by her father, King George VI. The brooch she wore for her Christmas address in 2021 — the year her husband Prince Philip died — was one from her honeymoon, Cordner added.
Perpetually in the public eye, Queen Elizabeth’s primary concern was to project stability, security and regal polish.
In recent years, she relied on her dream team of Angela Kelly, her personal assistant, adviser and curator, and Stewart Parvin, the London-based couturier. Together they gave her a closet full of brighter colors — like neon green — and sharper, more flattering silhouettes.
It wasn’t just London designers who drew inspiration from Her Majesty. In the days following her death, designers and retailers in Europe and the U.S. paid tribute to her unique style.
Giorgio Armani wrote that “imagining, all of a sudden, the world without Elizabeth Il, Queen Elizabeth in the collective imagination, is very difficult for me. I think it is for all those who, in these long years of reign, have become fond of her even though they are not British. The idea of the monarchy always makes one dream: it is linked to history, and to fairy tales.”
Armani believed she represented “the epitome of the queen: balanced, loyal, unfazed despite the inevitable scandals. She was symbolic even in the smallest gesture. As a designer, I have always admired her very personal way of dressing and communicating as well as her reserve. I would have never changed anything about her.”
In the end, it was a long goodbye.
During the 10 days of national mourning, members of the public waited in the rain for hours for their chance to walk past the coffin and pay their respects to the late queen lying in state at Westminster Hall in London.
Among them was former England football captain David Beckham, who stood for 13 hours and politely rejected an offer to jump ahead in the line. He said he wanted to wait, like everyone else, to pay his respects.
“I grew up in a household of royalists, and I was brought up that way. I was so lucky I was able to have a few moments in my life to be around Her Majesty,” Beckham told British media while he waited.
Some designers found themselves under added pressure ahead of the state funeral, which saw world leaders, international royals, Commonwealth dignitaries and extended members of the queen’s family gather at Westminster Abbey for the service.
Stephen Jones said orders for funereal black hats began flooding in “around half an hour” after the queen’s death.
“People knew they needed to prepare. The Commonwealth countries, in particular, are hot-wired into the British sensibility,” said Jones, referring to the political association of countries that were former territories of the British Empire.
The queen spent her long career strengthening ties with those countries, and her relationship with the Commonwealth nations was an enormous source of pride.
In the days before the funeral, the queen’s children and grandchildren, including Prince Harry, who has officially stepped down from royal duties, held vigil beside the coffin. Those family members would later gather for the funeral at Westminster Abbey, where the queen married Prince Philip in 1947 and where her coronation took place in 1953.
It was an historic moment for many reasons, not least because the last monarch to have a funeral at Westminster Abbey was King George II in 1760. It was also the first funeral service of a British monarch to be televised.
The grandeur of the event — from the moment the state gun carriage arrived at Westminster Abbey bearing the queen’s coffin to the moment that coffin was lowered into the royal vault inside the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor — wowed the world, or at least the multimillions who took the time to watch.
And even as Britain mourned one monarch, it welcomed another — this time a king. Prince Charles ascended to the throne at age 74, the oldest person to do so. Even as the country’s meticulous machinery of a royal funeral kicked in, so too did its traditions of royal succession, ranging from the proclamation of a new king — “Long Live the King!” — to the breaking of the queen’s royal staff. There further historical title shifts, with Charles’ wife Camilla becoming Queen Consort and his heir William and his wife Kate Middleton, a fashion fixture in her own right, becoming Prince and Princess of Wales as heirs to the throne.
There is more pomp and ceremony to come. On May 6, King Charles III will be crowned at Westminster Abbey alongside Camilla in a ceremony that is set to be more low-key than in the past and representative of different faiths and community groups.
The coronation is a state occasion paid for by the British government, and Buckingham Palace has already said the event “will reflect the monarch’s role today, and look toward the future,” while being rooted in long-standing traditions and pageantry.