A royal reportage from the i-D archive
When the late Dame Elizabeth Taylor’s vast collection of jewellery was auctioned off last year, one piece drew particular attention. The Prince of Wales Brooch had belonged to one Duchess of Windsor - the controversial Wallis Simpson - and had been purchased by the actress in the 1980s. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had to buy myself jewellery,” she’d later quip, having outbid members of the royal family to own it. Taylor wasn’t just Hollywood royalty in the eyes of the film industry, she fashioned herself entirely in the image of a queen, with all the diamonds, pearls and regal insignia she could scrape together. So deep-rooted was Taylor’s view of her royal self that her third husband Mike Todd once found her doing laps in the pool wearing a 19th century tiara. Taylor’s representation of herself was, in part, the birth of self-proclaimed royalty - a phenomenon which would become one of the most dominant in pop culture. Fast forward, to this year’s Super Bowl, at which Madonna mimicked one of Taylor’s most legendary silver screen moments for the opening of her halftime show, the magnificent entry of Cleopatra into Rome. The role of the Egyptian Pharaoh seemed to come as natural to the Queen of Pop as it did to Taylor. Earlier this year, when Madonna released her film W.E. about The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, she admitted to identifying with Wallis Simpson. She also weighed in on the status of royalty in modern society. “Edward VIII was really like a movie star,” Madonna claimed. “People were in love with him. Now, with the royals, their role in society seems to be reduced to being ambassadors. I think it’s a shame in a way. I like the old-fashioned way.” In a 2006 documentary, upon learning that she wouldn’t be allowed to land at Heathrow due to royal 236 i-D THE ROYALTY ISSUE
movement, the singer cheekily retorted, “There’s not room for two Queens in this country!” Some years later she’d greet her audiences from an elevated throne on her not so regally named Sticky & Sweet Tour. A more apparent declaration of social and professional status wasn’t seen until last year, when rap royalty Jay-Z and Kanye West released their aptly titled Watch the Throne album. And when Whitney Houston passed away in February, headlines hailed her as “The Queen of the Night”, a nod to both her classic hit single and her position in the music industry. It’s funny; with all the criticism the monarchy takes for being an obsolete institution, it would appear royalty is more in vogue than ever. With its court heels, shiny tights and tiaras, classic royal dress code has never been easily compatible with trends. But the monarchy has more in common with fashion than you’d first assume. For each of the two entities, it is the primary objective in life to reinvent itself and remain a loyal and familiar servant to its subscribers, all at once. In order to survive, both fashion and the monarchy can never be too alien and never too dull. And both, you might say, are only as good as their last party. So it was high time fashion recognised the wardrobe of one the most iconic dressers in the world, Queen Elizabeth II. Coinciding with Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, for spring/summer 12 designers honoured the signature look of The Queen - whether intentionally or not - with collections drawing on her Mid-Century trademark style. At Louis Vuitton, what looked like 1950s debutantes in powder pastels and tiaras circled around a merry-go-round, while at Erdem, the Wedgwood blue of the ballroom at The Savoy was matched to
floral prints on dainty dresses, styled with short lace gloves and a surprisingly agreeable take on the often so scorned court heel. There were no shiny tights in sight, but even fashion has its limits. A regal reference was hardly new territory for Erdem, who became a royal dress purveyor twice over last year when The Duchess of Cambridge wore his dresses on her visit to Canada. Kate’s Erdem looks marked the first time she’d worn pre-collection pieces that weren’t already available in shops, which had PRs wondering how she got a hold of them in the first place since, naturally, one doesn’t wear samples. The addition of a Princess to The Royal Family in 2011 served as a reminder of the fashion power held by young royalty. Instantly, The Duchess was hailed as a royal style icon, joining the ranks of Marie Antoinette, Wallis Simpson, Grace Kelly, and Diana Spencer before her. Some would say the title was undeserved, others that it came with the ennoblement. But the fact remains: a dress always looks a little better to us when it’s hanging off royal bones. When we hail the ennobled daughter of a former stewardess and a supplier of party decorations as a royal style icon, it’s not because we want to mimic her dress sense. It’s because we want to mimic her royal aura. And in the fashion industry, the royal associations and aspirations of course apply no less than anywhere else. Even before she was awarded a DBE by The Queen in 2006, Dame Vivienne Westwood was perpetually referred to by fashion writers as The Grande Dame of Fashion - or The Queen of Punk, a perhaps more suitable nickname seeing how the designer was photographed sans knickers upon exiting Buckingham Palace in 1992 when she, prior to her DBE, received an OBE. “I have heard that the picture amused The Queen,” Westwood nonchalantly noted. With his powdered hair, majestic collars and bejewelled fingers, Karl Lagerfeld is the goth-rock embodiment of an 18th century king. In German history, royalty has a rather more sombre ring to it than in England, thanks in no shared part to the last emperor of Prussia, the ruthless Kaiser Wilhelm II. No title could have been more perfect for Lagerfeld than Kaiser Karl: the absolute monarch of fashion. Thankfully Kaiser Karl approved of the Alexander McQueen bridal gown designed for The Duchess by Sarah Burton. (It was “much nicer than Diana’s, which was a giant white taffeta curtain,” in case you were wondering.) The spring/summer 12 collection, which followed Burton’s royal wedding success, exemplified the idea of the power of the royal aura. Here was a regal parade of dresses, fusing the fairy tale element of the royal bridal gown with the delicate mid-century flavour of a traditional royal wardrobe, and the references to Elizabeth I, which were key to the universe of Lee McQueen. But it wasn’t just the clothes that made things regal. Rather, it was the ceremonial atmosphere, the majestic march of the models, and - indeed - the knowledge that we were witnessing the work of a royal dress designer. It was an atmosphere echoed at Comme des Garçons, where white 1950s dresses united the royal wedding fever and the QE2 silhouette in one queenly sweep. After all, nothing testifies as highly to our infatuation with the royals as the global interest in the royal wedding. 47 million people in Great Britain and America watched as the Princess formerly known as Kate strode down the Westminster Abbey isle, Pippa and infamous derriere in tow. There’s a certain irony in the fact that Americans tend to be bigger royalists than Europeans. If the American revolutionaries of the War of Independence had known their descendants would be getting up at 3am to watch the royal wedding, they might have reconsidered going to all that trouble with George III in the first place. A pseudo-monarchy in its own right, Hollywood is the most apparent testimony to a country’s need for a group of people to admire and imitate. And while we’re too cynical to admit it in England, a public profile like Prince Harry serves the exact same purpose to us as someone like Brad Pitt does to the Americans - and to the rest of the world. They are pillars of society. Role models. When the world hailed Michael Jackson as The King of Pop, it was a popular manifestation of his status as the world’s best living entertainer. Michael Flatley only managed to pirouette his way to a lordship. Elvis Presley is the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Madonna the Queen of Pop, and Britney Spears the Princess. Regardless of our belief in political democracy, the unrivalled status of a person is - in popular terms - always measured by royal rank. After all, Leonardo Di Caprio didn’t mount the prow of the Titanic to cry, “I’m the prime minister of the world!” Not surprisingly, it was Dame Elizabeth Taylor who first proclaimed her friend Michael Jackson “The King of Pop.” (Her exact quote was “The King of Pop, Rock and Soul,” but the merchandise-making pop fans of the early 1990s wisely edited it down to something a little more banner-friendly.) With his sparkly military marches, princely portraits and drawing rooms worthy of an 18thcentury King, Jackson is the most exceptional example of self-styled royalty in our time. In his home Neverland, he built a modern-day Versailles where he held court for the country’s elite and could protect himself from the normalcy
of the real world like the Sun King he was. He married Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of another self-proclaimed King, named both his sons Prince Michael, and dressed them in uniforms bearing his crowned ‘MJ’ crest. Like an absolute monarch, abandoned in his fame, Jackson befriended the only people who could relate to his magnificent state of mind: the royals of the world - from Princess Stephanie of Monaco, who recorded the whispers on his track In The Closet, to the sultans of the Middle-East, and most famously his confidante, Princess Diana. “We would talk about everything that was happening in her life,” Jackson said of his relationship with The Princess of Wales. “She needed to talk to someone who knew exactly what she was going through. She felt hunted in the way I’ve felt hunted. Trapped, if you like. You can’t talk about that to your neighbour, because how would they ever understand?” Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. For Jackson, seeing himself as royalty was perhaps a result of a meeting between the megalomania, which would inevitably come with unparalleled fame such as his, and his childlike mind, immersed in adventurous “conquests and kings on a throne,” as he sang on the poignant testimonial track, Childhood. Indeed, there’s something innately childlike about the royal dream. A grunge Princess fairy tale, the Meadham Kirchhoff spring/summer 12 show - which featured a pastel explosion of Marie Antoinette ballerinas and a tiara-wearing life-size wedding cake topper, and most of all resembled JonBenét Ramsey’s birthday party (on acid) - could have been the fantasy of any eight-year-old girl. Well, a slightly twisted one, perhaps. Children grow up playing Princes and Princesses on an inspirational backdrop of the classic fairy tales, Disney films and royal birthday parades we feed them from an early age. American teenagers stage coronations of Prom Kings and Queens at high school parties, bridal shops sell ‘Princess Gowns’, and newlyweds rent vintage limousines and horse-driven carriages to mimic the grandeur of royal weddings. In many ways, the world Michael Jackson created wasn’t that different from the world that a middle-class housewife from the MidWest tries to create every day. MJ just didn’t have to do it on a budget. What the housewife can’t ever buy however is the royal aura; that indefinable quality possessed exclusively by the monarchy, which has drawn us to them since the dawn of time. Jackson shared this rare mystique. He was the most famous person in the world not only because of his superhuman talents, but because he held an ability to make us long to know more about him. In his incredible extravagance, Jackson defined the meaning of pop royalty and created a lifestyle of regal splendour to which new generations of self-proclaimed Kings and Queens could aspire. In a new era of music royalty where the logo-crazed wardrobes and absurd bling of the 2000s won’t get you far, Jay-Z is King. Next to Beyoncé - his Queen Bee - and fellow rap dynasty members such as Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, Jay-Z fronts a generation of music royalty to whom good taste, intelligent fashion, and high culture are key. Baggy jeans have been replaced by bespoke Tom Ford tuxedos, gold chains have been traded in for Balenciaga, and when you’re not recording you’re designing ready-to-wear in Paris. David Beckham, once a nouveau riche footballer written off as the flashy regent at ‘Beckingham Palace’, now attends actual royal weddings and is an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Indeed, the bar for self-proclaimed royalty has been raised. But whereas the monarchs of music, film, sports and fashion are expected to live up to certain levels of extravagance, the real royals of the world must never be too showy. Shame on The Prince of Wales if he brings too many aide-de-camps with him on state visits. Shame on The Duke of Cambridge if he uses his helicopter off duty. Thank heavens his wife shops at Tesco. We would like to live like Kings, but Kings should live like their subjects. Gone are the days when the Russian Tsar and his family would send their laundry to Paris once a week and be admired around the European kingdoms for it. No other King will ever buy over 12,000 diamonds for a cool new crown for himself the way George IV did for his coronation. And no modern Queen will ever get the kind of clothes budget that Marie Antoinette spent on becoming history’s most notorious fashion icon. In a present day world of constitutional monarchies, which no longer reign by the will of God, but by the will of their peoples, the titles of King and Queen are anyone’s for the taking - at least within their own royal realms. Everyone is King of their own world, everyone is an absolute monarch. But on the 60th year of the reign of Elizabeth II, let’s not forget who inspired the Kings and Queens of pop culture in the first place. Let’s not forget who owns the throne.
“When we hail the ennobled daughter of a former stewardess as a royal style icon, it’s not because we want to mimic her dress sense. It’s because we want to mimic her royal aura.” i-D THE ROYALTY ISSUE 237