Emphasized by the responsibility given to him on the occasion of the wedding of the century between Lady Diana and Prince Charles in 1981, the designer preferred to sew the latter in case of force majeure.
With a plunging neckline, puffed sleeves, a voluminous skirt and above all an impressive train almost 8 meters long, the dress worn by Lady Diana on her wedding day on July 29, 1981 made an impression. Elizabeth Emanuel and her ex-husband David are behind its creation. The design duo began collaborating with the Princess of Hearts by making a blouse for her, which she wore for a photo shoot in February 1981 to celebrate her engagement to Prince Charles, now King Charles III. A month later, they re-signed Diana’s iconic dress. The strapless black satin dress she wore alongside Prince Charles during her first official public engagement made headlines in the British press and propelled her to the forefront of fashion. Therefore, it is to the British couple that the future princess decides to entrust the creation of her wedding dress. “I had a hard time controlling myself,” Elizabeth Emanuel told the magazine Peoplein an interview published on April 3.
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Extraordinary dress
Now 70, the London-based designer is once again taking his thimble for Diana’s very special wedding dress. For Princess Diana’s virtual museum, she is going to revisit the extraordinary dress she made in 1981. “I was a bit neurotic and I said to myself: Is it a fire or was it stolen? , he tells People. So I said to myself. “I’m going to make a spare dress.”
The dress that would save the day was not a replica of the dress Diana would eventually wear. The silk was white, “not the deep ivory of the royal wedding dress,” says Elizabeth Emanuel. It also didn’t have the puffy sleeves we’ve come to know, and instead had “thin sleeves that were more fitted to his arms” with rolled up cuffs. Above all, he did not have the huge train that we find in the archive images. As for the fabric, unlike the dress Diana wore, on which the designer had hand-embroidered the designs, the replacement was made from ready-made fabric. However, this famous dress was never finished, and the designer does not know exactly what became of it. That’s why he was asked to recreate it. “We’ve never had the chance to see this dress on Diana and thought it would be cool to visualize it,” explained René Plant, the museum director and curator behind the commission.
Source: Le Figaro
