The D word

I have no idea why I do it. There is no explanation for the fact that I’ve ended up with these things. Some time ago I spotted a book about the late Princess of Wales in a charity shop and bought it. Since then I’ve bought a few more, along with a couple of thimbles on Ebay though I think the thimbles had more to do with their kitsch appeal than sympathy. For some reason I have taken more interest in Diana since her death than I did when she was alive.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the books that were produced about her in the 1980’s have begun to crop up for sale amongst the bric-a-brac, possibly because someone has moved and decided to let go of a collection or because there has been a death. It is likely to be the latter because so many of her fans were loyal to the last.

Looking through those books it is impossible not to feel sad that the behaviour most of us took to be a coy shyness was in truth indicative of a fear and nervousness we could not have begun to imagine. How mean some of the comments made about her then seem now, with the benefit of hindsight. I can’t help wondering how she felt, at an age where young women are particularly self conscious about their appearance, to have all that aimed at her when she was coming to terms with such a strange new life. Regarded as one of the most elegant women of 1981 she was then voted one of The Ten Worst Dressed of 1982.

From what she said to those who recorded her thoughts, she could never really understand why she had such a potent effect on some of the men around her. I saw this for myself when a teacher at the school I attended at the time came back from a lunch break having seen her. The tough, blunt Scot was useless for the rest of the day because she had smiled at him.

Of course her daughter-in-law to be, the girl she never had the chance to meet, has all that ahead of her and the strange thing is that there has a been a lapse of time large enough for many to forget that the same things are being said all over again. That Kate is a style icon, that she is bound to encourage new interest in the British fashion industry, that she will set trends rather than follow them.

“It was really on the day that she became engaged to the Prince of Wales that she became a leader of fashion. Copies of the magnificent sapphire and diamond engagement ring were very soon on sale for anything from a few pounds to a few thousand pounds, depending on whether they were made of coloured glass or the real thing. Of course the soft blue suit, which became the perfect foil for the engagement ring, was copied everywhere too, and the colour of the season became ‘Lady Diana Blue.‘” “Princess, Leader of Fashion“, Martina Shaw

A few weeks ago I was walking behind someone who looked so much like Kate because of her clothes and hair, and I realise now that what she has in common with Diana is her ordinariness. Diana set a trend for pie crust blouses and that bobbed hairstyle because the media transmitted her look (worn by hundreds of women in central London) to thousands elsewhere. The woman I was following by chance wore her hair long, her raincoat belted in at the waist and her long boots kitten heeled because so many others of her generation do. And now even more do simply because she does.

How easily the lessons of Diana’s trials at the hands of the media have been forgotten. Kate and her family have already suffered the ignominy of being scrutinised and then criticised when her relationship with William broke down briefly. The footage of her walking quickly through a horde of photographers in the early days, head down and hunted, brought back many queasy memories of Diana and her ordeal, both before and after her marriage.

Few are willing to say it out loud, that Kate will inevitably be seen through the filter that her mother-in-law’s experience created. Every British royal bride will be for the foreseeable future. Diana has slept on her island at Althorp for over a decade now and she isn’t coming back but her influence is as powerful as if she had risen from the dead. The special but intangible wedding gift she has given both her boys is contact and experience of the real world. Their experience of normality may still be a long way off from that of the man who waves at them as they drive past today but they are so much closer to it than their father and his siblings ever were.

I hope that this gift will give the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton a fighting chance. I wish them a long, happy and drama free life, full of all the things that a certain blonde, whose memorabilia I will probably continue to accumulate, was denied.

Royal Wedding Charity Fund
Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund