There are three Google search terms guaranteed to elevate my mood: 'shaved alpaca', 'Cliff Richard calendar' and 'Princess Diana gym.' The latter, specifically, is like a hot bath on sore limbs. Why? Because princess Diana has been my style icon since I can remember and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
It began around the age of 10 or 11 when I saw this image and it resonated with me on a cellular level. I remember thinking, probably dressed in something unintentionally similar from Clockhouse at C&A, that she was 'it', that things just couldn’t get any better: the outfit, the attitude, the face, the stance. The lot. Looking at it now, it’s still pure alchemy: the charity jumper, the drainpipe jeans, the enormous blazer that looks like it should be on the back of a ruddy old war veteran in the pub, the chunky gold hoops (her earring game was always big), the silly cap. You can almost smell the wet mud on her soles meeting the heavy florals of her Hermés perfume. Heaven.
It’s never been about glam Diana, either. Forget the gowns, the diamonds and the glittering smiles as John Travolta span her round dance-floors. I was, and still am, in love with off-the-clock Diana: Diana going to the gym, Diana jogging in a Harvard University jumper through Knightsbridge, Diana doing errands. For me, it was the dodgy-jumper-and-cycling-shorts combinations that best represented her fashion A-game. The little sunglasses. The polo-necks. The Barbour jackets. The white sports socks pulled right up her taut, tanned shins and slid into trainers that looked like P&O ferries. Rihanna said last year 'She [Diana] was a gangsta with her clothes!' I'm right with her.
Diana wasn’t always on-point, though. At the beginning of her marriage to Charles she allowed royal advisers to pick her clothing, hence why she often dressed like a woman three times her age; her magnificent, fawn-like face lost under gaudy hats with their own weather systems. But over time she found her groove, changing her hairstyle every three minutes - according to my mum hairdressers in the 80s couldn’t keep up with demands from women wanting Diana’s latest ‘do - and obviously relaxed about what she was comfortable being photographed in. But how relaxed was she?
I’m sure if you could have looked her in the eye that you’d have seen a flicker of her inner torment, particularly when she was all done up somewhere, being our Princess, turning our hearts to mince. But elsewhere, away from the iron railings and flying bouquets, she sort of Just Got On With It. And isn’t that one of the sexiest things? Just seeing a woman doing stuff, getting her shit together, regardless of what she’s up against. She managed to portray, despite her famous vulnerabilities, an air of togetherness. A wobbly sort of strength. Her clothes, when they ostensibly didn’t 'matter', had both a distinct, zero-shit-giving waft about them and a gorgeous cluelessness, like she’d just gathered a random handful of things from a drawer and didn’t need to worry about it really because, despite what she may have believed, she was so, stupidly beautiful.
The funny thing is that, these days, you see flashes of Diana on cool young women everywhere today. Think you’re breaking ground with your mad, unbrushed hair, thick gold earrings and collegiate jacket? No. Your high-waisted 'mum' jeans and bodysuit? No. Or what about that [Moschino belt {href='http://lookbook.nu/search?q=moschino+belt' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer'})? No mate. Diana had it down. She couldn’t have anticipated how much her look would be emulated decades down the line, but there’s an answer for that: she was, in all her ill-fitting denim and polo-necked glory, timeless. Especially because she didn’t realise it, and even in the “Diana and Fergie skiing” years.
Follow Eleanor Morgan on Twitter @eleanormorgan
Pictures: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.