The Memories Of Elizabeth’s Early Life | Changing Face

her face has been on our stamps and money for nearly 60 years and over 20 million people worldwide tune into her christmas day speech whether in tweed or the crown jewels she's instantly recognizable queen elizabeth ii is surely one of the most iconic women in the world as a leader of a nation she's so much more powerful than any politician can ever be because they come and go the queen will never lose power she does like the camera in the camera like that people have said time and time and time again the media have cried out the queen has got to change she doesn't change she adapts during her six decades on the throne the world has changed and so has she from a young princess to the world's favorite grandmother this is the story of the changing face of the queen [Music] princess elizabeth alexandra mary was born on the 21st of april 1926. the daughter of the duke and duchess of york she was third in line to the british throne and not expected to become queen she was on the cover of time magazine at the age of three but the reason she was on it was because she was a fashion icon already mothers were not ordering pink outfits or even blue outfits for their children it was yellow because that was what princess lilibet wore i think she had a very happy childhood but it was quite strange she never went to school of course so she was taught with princess margaret's french and all sorts of other subjects at home but i think in some ways it was a bit of a lonely childhood she didn't mix with other children and it's often said that she became more attached to her pets her dogs that's where her love of dogs started and it has been said that she prefers dogs horses and then people but they were very much a family in the very ordinary sense of the word which is why i think people were very attracted to stories about them the thing about them were that they were like everybody else except they weren't this image of a happy family was captured by a select group of photographers who were invited inside the palace among them cecil beaton beaton created a very romantic fairy tale like quality to the royal subjects that he photographed and the painted backgrounds were really intricate they kind of depict forests and flowers and birds and there's a certain kind of haziness to the photographs princess margaret and princess elizabeth always seemed to be dressed alike in the late 1930s despite their difference in age and size for some period in time normal family life came to a dramatic end when in 1936 her uncle edward viii abdicated her father became king and she was the next in line when george vi did become king and people said to him well it's not too late you could try for a boy you know the thought was it should be a boy to succeed he actually said no that he had seen qualities in this elder daughter of his that he knew were right it was a very personal thing because it meant that her father became king and of course she always thought and many people thought that the stress of becoming king shortened his life everybody in buckingham palace used to say you know what a good thing lillabet's the elder one maybe of course some of princess margaret's problems her spoiltness and so on came from being the younger sister lilybet had this extraordinary sense of duty and seriousness played the elder sister to the naughty little sister post abdication elizabeth suddenly is in line for the throne and she is on royal engagements uh perhaps on her own and hartnell clearly designs much more serious styles for princess elizabeth there were photographs around 19 38 39 40. the captions of the picture say oh princess elizabeth's growing up and there she is getting a lovely bosom like her mother she goes from being a little girl in ankle socks to a girl who wears silk stockings when princess elizabeth and princess margaret escorted by screen star john mills attended a ball given by the lord's taverners the british royal family really had celebrity status throughout the war and in the post-war period young girls were fascinated by what the princesses were wearing pathe news filmed them whatever they were doing basically the general public were very very interested in royalty and they were like film stars and soon everyone took the floor caught in the well of the dark they were incredibly glamorous i mean the queen was an absolutely stunning looking woman uh when she was 25 and uh winston churchill always said he was a little bit in love with her they were very much the the diana the caton pippa of their day this was more exciting than somebody being on the cover of grazia today for example or even vogue it would be terribly hard for the young generation to understand just how fabulous the queen and princess margaret were how they dressed how they behaved in the 40s and 50s you know the world was watching elizabeth's movie star look was masterminded by society dressmaker norman hartnell she went to paris on her first solo state visit princess elizabeth was dressed by hartnell but because she was going to paris she didn't want to seem unfashionable so mr hartnell devised a new look the princess look it was called for her so that was a moment when she was cutting edge the queen is one of the most photographed women in the world at camera press they've been distributing her image for over 60 years there are press photographers they will follow the royals on official tours they will go to the actual events as they happen and document those events but there are a select group of photographers that are invited to come and photograph the queen in a in a more formal way [Music] dorothy wilding who's a really interesting case her pictures of the queen i would say are really some of the most glamorous she took beautiful portraits brightly lit with very plain backgrounds and often the queen was in norman heart and couture she photographed the queen looking very much like the princess she was at the time we used to get quite excited because there used to be two magazines in those days i think one was the um picture post and one was illustrated and i always bought that book every week because they always had some of the best pictures of the um the royal family especially when she was on tours elizabeth was just 21 when she turned her back on the single life and married prince philip of greece that she loved him her parents weren't dreadfully happy about it elizabeth would not be swayed she knew this was the man for her she only had eyes for philip and in this destiny in which she was going to be able to choose so few things she chose him army generic writing side by side with flowing pageantry past britain's greatest royal occasion since the coronation well they said that people gave their clothing coupons for the wedding dress and and there was i think there was a mood of um with the royal wedding um approaching uh great excitement it was something that people were so looking forward to because of the years of the war and still more of austerity and now despite the efforts of the police they broke all bands in a great surging tide of love and loyalty it was the wedding dress they all wanted to know what the wedding dress was like because it was such when a wedding dress in a wedding is the most important thing isn't it for wedding or wedding dress it was royal designer norman hartnell who has chosen to create a wedding dress fit for a queen mr hartnell he did several sketches for the princess elizabeth and the one she chose i remember him bringing it to the table with the beautiful sketch she had betty foster was only a teenager when she worked on princess elizabeth's wedding dress and i think there were 20 or 22 buttonholes and i had never ever sewn a buttonhole before so i had to sit and practice and there the buttonholes i had to practice which went down fast in the back of the dress and and there are the buttons i had to make those as well princess was now seen in the fall splendor of that exquisite pearl encasted wedding gown which has fully been described as something out of a fairy tale oh it was it was absolutely beautiful although we made the dress i always say it was the embroidery that gave the dress its beauty may the present happiness of our princess and her sailor husband grow ever deeper for the years to come [Music] the navy posted the newly married philip to malta so the young princess went with him he was given the his first command of a ship and she went out as the captain's wife the first and only time in her life when she could drive her own car through the streets go into shops go to a hairdressing cellar have money in her pocket spend it it was a very precious time for them which is why the queen has placed so much importance on william and catherine um having that time before they assume duties the young couple soon became parents with the arrival of charles in 1948 and anne in 1950 but their carefree days were sadly short-lived and following for the heavily veiled grieving figures of the queen the queen mother and princess margaret well i always think of that iconic photograph of the three queens of queen mary queen elizabeth the queen mother and and the present queen on the death of george vi in 1952 and in full mourning with very very deep veils covering the faces dignity ramrod straight posture no tears no emotion obviously profound emotion but but but suppressed because it has to be and that's what britain used to do that's how britain would handle somebody you know the sadness of death now he puts off the unwelcomed crown that heavy on his temples pressed the threats of state the bitter wars the cows that filled that anxious breast these marked him like a soldier's scars but even a king at last may rest they were very fond of the royal family and although they were very sad the king passing i think they welcomed elizabeth becoming queen so he passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side the date for the coronation was set and the queen commissioned the royal school of needlework to create the coronation robes we have had quite a part to play in the history of monarchy as i said we have done coronation pieces for every monarch since edward vii for queen elizabeth ii the theme was peace and prosperity very understandable as we were just coming out of the second world war we were still in rationing in this country so it was based on olive branches for the peace and wheat tears for the prosperity we had a team of people and they were working round the clock we had a story that never a seat should grow cold so that if somebody got up for a break somebody else sat down and continued to work on it and we had a period of three months to complete it and now like a great seventh wave the cheering grows to its climax into the forecourt of the palace and through the gates comes the gilded coach despite the fact that lots of people could only sort of go around to a neighbor who had a television and see it on a very small flickering screen it really made an impact on people and it was one of the great early televised events one of the great secrets of the coronation which is remembered as a feast of television and the television set became the best coronation souvenir to have because everybody watched it um on television is it the queen didn't want it televised and when this was um announced in i think october 1952 before the coronation of june 95th there was outrage it was really her first surrender of quite a few surrenders that she's had to make during her reign we didn't have a television in those days and we used to go into went into a neighbours to watch it but it was so exciting to see it the main principle was that she had to be crowned in the sight of the people and the tele common though it was and common though the people might be who watched the telly had to be there as well and that set a new note for the rain that was magical wasn't it that the procession and then in the abbey and then very touching when she was crowned i found that very touching very moving [Music] of course the queen's iconic she's on coins stamps our notes our currency she's everywhere and what you have to remember is that all of those um items that her that she appears on um they're all taken from photographs i mean dorothy wilding lord snowden they've all done shoots um and done photographic sessions with her where the resulting images are used for our coins and our stamps and things like that so she's everywhere [Music] well as far as the definitive stamps that have only been two designs in her entire 60 years the first one which appeared in 1952 which was based on the dorothy wilding portrait lasted until the late 60s and then the first machine stamps were issued in 1967 and the design remains the same to this day this is the most reproduced image of anybody in history anywhere it's one of the most iconic images of the 20th century and of course still going strong now when elizabeth came to the throne britain still had an empire and her face was on stamps around the world you know the african countries like nigeria and the gold coast and places like that were all still part of the empire and issuing stamps with the queen's head on they completely ditched the old colonial image and brought in a completely new set of stamps australia brought in pictures showing indigenous australian animals so yeah the koala and the the platypus replaced the queen in the long run i think when people look back and say well what did this woman actually achieve apart from smiling gracefully and presiding over britain's decline or revival or whatever you care to call it is that she did keep the commonwealth alive she changed the old british empire into something new and dynamic and when i say she did it she often had to fight against prime ministers the queen has seen more of her subjects in more countries around the world than any other monarch in history and of course the great thing about the queen is she never perspires it doesn't seem to matter how hot it is and i've seen her in the caribbean and in australia and sometimes boiling temperatures and everyone else is wilting and she always looks very cool whatever the circumstances the queen wears gloves because i think they protect her hands she shakes them off sort of important hands so they protect her hands but also they look nice [Music] my mum um cornelia james she was a jewish viennese refugee since she left austria just before the war in 1938. her big break came when she when norman hartnell designed the outfit for when the queen went away on a honeymoon and he asked my mother to do the gloves and that was the start of the sort of the royal connection which is nice really but on the other side we also make quite a lot of gloves for celebrities the list is long we also do a lot of work for films and then also if you look at the hands of cruella de vil those are our gloves i think quality things matter heritage matters made in england matters all these things are important i think and i think she just presents britain at its very best the white loved hand waiting for the back of the car is the queen's trademark [Music] and it's not just the queen's gloves that make her iconic her working wardrobe is as unique as she is in the early years of her reign she chose two dressmakers to design for her both hardy amos and norman hartnell worked closely with the queen but they were bitter rivals hardy amy's was arguably the greatest british couturier you know norman hartnell would probably dispute that hartnell's legacy is the tailored dress and coat ensemble and the crinoline gown both styles are still worn by our current monarch today but hardy amos lived longer than sir norman hartnell he probably dressed the queen an awful lot more than hartnell did this is the queen's mannequin and um it's her clothes were fitted on on the bus for 40 years practically well the book is a very grand very glamorous scrapbook of of the queen's travels and a chronicler for wardrobe that style was set by hartnell in the early years of his designing for her and once it was set it remained fixed and so that the queen wears very very similar styles and colors today that she wore 20 30 years ago well you could you could probably count the the number of people who make clothes for the queen on one hand she's probably had more prime ministers than she's had british designer stuart parvin is one of the dressmakers working for the queen today the queen doesn't necessarily wear her clothes in the same way that everybody else does for most people it is purely how it looks where the queen has to arrive at an event and she gets out of her car there can be no pulling it down tucking it in i don't know anybody who wears their evening dresses out i mean the queen wears her evening dresses far more than anybody else and she might have more than everybody else but she probably wears one most nights so she's always dressed as the queen almost there's not there's never there's never a sort of a country track comfy tracksuit bottom that she slips into sort of while she's reading her state papers she's always dressed properly there's a team of dresses who actually sort of help her manage to get ready and get dressed and make sure the clothes i mean the clothes are immaculately kept everything is pressed perfectly and put away i mean every dress has a sketch and with it is what hat goes with the there's a picture of the hat that goes with the dress and they then record on what occasions that outfit's been worn she doesn't want to turn up at the same place twice in the same outfit people remember the most memorable one to me is a beautiful primrose yellow coat which is the from the first collection of things i made for her yellow yellow i i think yellow's her favorite favorite color is a very very difficult color to wear but she look i think she's beautiful in that behind all the glitz and glamour the queen is very much a family woman when the time came for her to resume child bearing after about five or six years she said well i think we can have some more children now prince philip had come to feel it wasn't perhaps such a good idea he he wasn't for it but the queen got her way in that as in all things and she had two more children there were still photographs formal photographs of the queen in all the kind of trappings of monarchy that that gave off that image of the queen being on monarch but also you know the queen there were a lot of photographs that referenced the queen's roles as a mother that really took off in the 60s particularly so far as we know and these are aspects of the queen's life that she likes to keep very secret she was a more hands-on touchy-feely mother when it came to the last two boys and some would say that shows in the way they're spoiled in 1966 the queen celebrated her 40th birthday she was the mother of four children and no longer the fashion icon she'd once been if you look back to the 60s and 70s it was almost a fashion crisis point for the queen fashion came up from the street it was bubble up rather than trickle down it was all about young people and about freedom of expression it was a loss of formality it was everything the royal family does not stand for what the queen was wearing no longer was no longer important in terms of fashion she didn't seem to be um expressing the the sort of thoughts opinions philosophies of her people all the times so when you see the queen dressing as she did in the 40s and 50s still dressing like that in the 60s and 70s it it began to become quite uncomfortable during the 70s her hemlines do go up quite considerably and she does start to wear trouser suits but you'd never see her in trousers today the queen is associated with headgear of all sorts crowns tiaras headscarves and of course hats my mother was the royal milliner so she made many many of the the royal family's hats the only french woman to hold two royal warrants one from the queen and one from the queen mother it's very difficult to describe her style though she was known as the queen of turbans probably didn't invent the turban but she made it a very fashionable piece of headgear my mother used to have very exotic fashion shows um in our house and we had lots lots of journalists and photographers and and beautiful supermodels who were modelling her hats and i was able to peek through the banisters to to watch the fashion shows or if i was very very good sit at the top of the stairs and watch them my mother always said that the queen had a wonderful has a wonderful hat face and that most hats would suit her i think it sets her completely apart [Music] i pledged my life to the service of our people although that vow was made when i was green in judgment i do not regret nor attract one word of it in the summer of 1977 the queen celebrated 25 years on the throne the silver jubilee was marked with street parties up and down the country but behind palace walls elizabeth's son and air was giving cause for concern the meeting of charles and camilla a major turning point in the reign of the queen things are really going pretty well until that point and from the moment that they meet in the early 1970s that's frankly when things start to go wrong the queen became queen because of edward the eighth and his mad love an obsession for a married woman and charles pursued the same course up until then the monarchy was perceived as when it was perceived as being there the monarch was there but it was perceived as being fairly boring what did it do you know we we didn't know much about it and it was it wasn't in the doldrums but it was just sort of ticking along it was there doing the job and and uh from one day to the next then dinah came on the scene it was a bit of glamour [Music] it's the dynasty decade isn't it and diana princess of wales bought into it entirely i think looked pretty fabulous she was the star of the 80s the queen was not the queen doesn't care if someone wants to upstage her good luck to them and in many ways she was happy that diana brought a new vigor to that generation of the family she rescued charles from uh camilla so long as you both shall live [Music] well it used to be great fun in the old days we used to follow fergie and diner all over the place we actually used to follow them on their holidays and sometimes they were pleased to see us sometimes they weren't but diana in particular i think used to play up to it the media tended to focus and i'm talking about the print media focused on what she was wearing whether it was a dress her tights her stockings her makeup her hairstyle and they were focusing on her as a clothes source rather than a workhorse because it's almost the better dressed a person appears to be like the late down princess of wales the worse they behave so you almost don't want somebody to be too fabulous and too fashionable you know this is not dynasty it's the windsors every tuesday evening the queen meets with her prime minister during the 60 years of her reign there have been 12 of them only one has been a woman out onto the onto the doorstep well funnily enough the queen and mrs thatcher are actually the same age i think they had a difficult relationship i think the queen had a great deal of respect for mrs thatcher and certainly um prince philip was a big fan he he was heard to utter at a dinner once bring back mrs t there's nothing like mrs t so i think he he quite liked her she admired her tremendously the queen and certainly lady thatcher would always curtsy almost an exaggerated curtsy when she met the queen it was a bit of a love-hate relationship i'm not sure that it was not sure it was perfect i don't think she was her favorite prime minister but certainly i think she she greatly admires her there's a wonderful story about the queen and mrs thatcher when she was prime minister that the two attended many state functions together but one in particular i believe the dresses were terribly similar there isn't photographic evidence of this so but it's a lovely story and mrs thatcher's office wrote to the queen's lady in waiting and and muted that that perhaps they could confer about what they will be wearing if they're ever in the same room together and the queen's lady in waiting wrote back to lady thatcher and said the queen never notices what anybody is wearing [Music] this war at sea began for us at dawn on may day when the falklands were invaded in 1982 the relationship between the queen and her prime minister was tested as never before [Music] mrs thatcher declared war but it was the queen's son prince andrew that set sail for the south atlantic with the most marvelous fighting forces in the world they're courageous they're dedicated they're fighting a just cause everyone's behind them prince andrew was a serving serving naval officer and of course at that time he was flying helicopters very very dangerous he was actually a decoy for extra set missiles so he was uh in a great deal of danger i'm sure mrs thatch would have kept the queen informed of any major developments during the war generally and especially with prince andrew serving down there the queen was absolutely worried sick about him and was so relieved uh when he came back safely and of course prince andrew is widely regarded as the queen's favorite son is there anything you're particularly looking forward to uh once you've stepped ashore yes a pint of milk yeah i haven't had real milk for five and a half months the queen has a favorite photograph of prince andrew taken on his return from the falklands war she carries it with her everywhere she goes in her world famous handbag well the queen has about 200 handbags she never throws them away she's got a photo in there of prince andrew taken when he came back from the falklands she'll normally have a cut-out crossword some mints a pen knife she used to be in the girl guides chalk drops of course for the corgis a proper fountain pen she hates biros she always has a camera in there very small camera believe it or not it's an s-shaped meat hook she puts it on the table and she hangs the bag on it so that if she needs anything from the bag she doesn't have to bend down on the floor to pick it up the bags are all made by a firm called lorna who they have a factory up in in warsaw in the midlands our bags are all what you might call structured and that's part of their strength and also part of the time it takes to make you know i'd hate anything to happen to our bags as her majesty was carrying it she carries a bag because it suits her and she has said to us on occasions i don't feel fully dressed without a handbag i've run this business for 42 years and i have survived partly because of course of what we do but also partly because the queen is our most important customer and that's a wonderful thing 1992 was a low point for the queen as the marriages of three of her children ended in divorce or separation as we know sadly five six seven years into the marriages it all went um it all went wrong and unfortunately uh from being their greatest asset both of the both of them diane fergie really became you know the greatest threat to the monarchy some of the members of her family have have let her down and let her down 1992 is not a year on which i shall look back with undiluted pleasure on the night of the 20th of november 1992 a fire broke out at windsor castle it took 250 firefighters 12 hours to put it out it was another tragedy in a terrible year for the queen in the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondence it just turned out to be an anus horribilis and her voice was still hoarse from the smoke of the winds of fire and interesting the only way she could address the terrible tragedy of her house being burnt down and virtually all her children divorcing and being slagged off in the newspapers every day was to resort to latin new institution city monarchy whatever should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support and then along comes the government and parliament that we're not going to pay for it anyway that's what forced the royal family to open buckingham palace and it raises money that paid for windsor and that's the paradox of the queen we all think she's just the same but then you look at it and it's changed enormously she did go grey it actually changed color um overnight and people think that uh the queen has some kind of sudden shock i think in the in the 1990s perhaps when all the marriages were going wrong and uh and you know diane fergie left the royal family and had all sorts of problems but in fact she just decided to stop dying it had been going grey very slowly and she just reached a decision that she didn't want to um to bother anymore and so she she stopped using the diet as in other times of trouble the queen though well past retirement age found comfort and stability in her work work is very much her way through things but above all duty is the key word to to what she does one of the symbolic items that uh with which she was dressed at her coronation was the what's called the wedding ring of england she is married to england and she will do that job until she dies you know that that's her commitment she'll die with her boots on of course that diary even now that's an incredible diary for one of that age to have the queen still has hundreds of official engagements every year come rain or shine she was in canada about a year ago and it was an absolutely awful day for weather it was blustery really windy the rain was pouring down and i saw these umbrellas basically being wrenched from people's hands flung inside out snapping and i thought to myself oh my god this is going to be the worst advert for a fulton umbrella and the camera then moves to the queen she's coming out of her private airplane she's got the fulton umbrella the bird cage with her i could see the queen holding it directly above her head and shoulders the umbrella wasn't flapping at all and she just came down the stairs very elegantly so i think that was distinguished essential occasion for having her umbrella basically the umbrellas must match or at least complement our outfits and then we'll produce the umbrellas with the coloured borders that go around the edge with the matching handle and then we send them off to the palace i find it very difficult to describe precisely what it is about the queen that's so great i don't know i think she's different from a celebrity i think she has a lot more like uh renowned respect than celebrity celebrities will do anything to get on television you know and she's kind of always been in the spotlight uh she's a five dollar girl oh well she's getting a bit old now isn't she so she's allowed to be from here i can't say that about the queen yeah and she doesn't know me she's a normal family she's got divorced kids and things in trouble so she's normal and dad still worries about her husband because he doesn't like greeks i would love to have team with the queen i think that'd be great we'd like to be a republic but we don't have anything against the queen we want the best of both worlds a bit like the canadians you know this works separately but they got the queen on their money too you know so when you ask people why is the queen so great why do you admire her so much and they think and they think and then they say well she's never put a foot wrong which is true but it's not the most stirring positive endorsement you can give well the queen's is essentially the captain of the national ship isn't she you know and she's steered through some very choppy waters on the 30th of august 1997 diana princess of wales was killed in a car crash it was a defining moment for the monarchy the message the queen sends out his duty comes first above all else there's only one occasion in her entire reign that she's put family before duty and that was at the time of the death of dinah princess of wales queen's priority suddenly switched from the people down in london well they can take care of themselves i mean her attitude towards the wreaths being laid and everything come on get over it a bit i mean because her priority was the two boys she was in charge of them as their grandmother she took that very seriously indeed this is an old saying within royal circles you do not wear private grief on a public sleeve williams [Music] there were tens of thousands milling around buckingham palace and kensington palace keeping kleenex in business and the florists in business um and clamoring for it to come back your people need you mass hysteria i would imagine this must have been an alien concept to her majesty actually to see that response and to see a the media and be the people seem to be turning with tensions building the queen changed her plans she left balmoral early to return to london and she does a walk about she doesn't do one walk about she does two walkabouts and she makes her she eulogizes diner in a live television broadcast then their attitudes change so what i say to you now as your queen and as a grandmother i say from my heart first i want to pay tribute to diana myself she was an exceptional and gifted human being the funeral of the people's princess had to balance the world's expectations with the wishes of diana's two young sons [Music] the little harry was quite sure yes he was happy to walk behind his mother's coffin william had more complex feelings and it was in that moment that prince philip and prince philip hadn't been planned in the scheme of things at all said well you know if you walk i'll walk with you and they walked under the arch on the horse guards parade and they thought there were no cameras there and there was a camera in the roof they thought they were sort of off stage for a minute at that moment [Music] prince harry reached out to to encourage uh william you know that's the sort of thing that um marries a monarchy to its society forever the monarchy was perceived as being in the beginning of week uncaring and at the end of the week the best people in the business [Music] well if you put the queen in the context of the great queens of england of elizabeth the first in queen victoria the image making is essentially propaganda it was then it is now it's even more important to get the brand and i hate to use the phrase but the royal family is a brand there's no getting around it and the queen understands that brand very well people have said time and time and time again the media have cried out the queen has got to change she doesn't change she adapts today they're very up to date their press office etc with the internet and twitter and facebook and they use all the the modern tools to get their various messages across i think we need the monarchy desperately i do i mean look at the french the poor things you know they're beheaded all of theirs and they're you know they're green with envy now in the late 90s if you'd said well you know when prince william gets married prince charles will walk down the aisle with camilla beside him and william will kiss camilla and the queen will embrace camilla and this woman that everybody hated will be incorporated into the fabric of things that's how much things have changed she's a very realistic woman she looked at how the world had changed she realized she needed to change but i think she herself has become freer as she's got older [Applause] i think the most recent royal wedding between prince william and kate middleton is a very good example of how the queen still manages to be center stage even though she's not the bride [Music] she's very obviously the queen in her pale yellow angela kelly silk coat and dress and hat quietly in the background but still the center of center stage the most important person i would imagine for the royal wardrobe today is mrs kelly angela kelly who's the queen's dresser angela kelly is said to have saved um saved the the royal coffers something like 250 000 pounds in the last couple of years by making and designing her own clothes so that's the sort of the clothes for the queen so that's the sort of money that she would have been spending otherwise and they can't keep it quite a secret how much she actually spends um believe it or not she's got two million pounds worth of furs which she never wears now sitting down in a refrigerated room in buckingham palace couture certainly is not about wearing it once and throwing it away for any client couture clothing was built to last and worn through the years and mended and realigned when it was needed and the queen was no different goodness knows how much her clothes are worth i mean nothing's ever thrown away so as i say the handbags and the shoes are all still there and some of them are 40 50 years old i think if i were the duchess of cambridge or kate if we're allowed to be over familiar i would listen to nobody but the queen look to the queen as the example of that's how to behave you know that's how you do it she must look on sometimes now when she sees the the interest in in case and pippa she must look on with a wry smile and think back all those years and think it used to be me but she's still very popular herself of course in fact i probably say she's more popular than ever elizabeth ii has transformed from child staff to the world's most famous grandmother she's lived through wars disasters and family tragedy doing her duty at all times and she doesn't show any sign of stopping a figure like the queen i mean she's possibly the most visually represented woman in the world ever to have lived she has been photographed from birth to the present day with her image on everything from stamps to tea trees the queen has grown old in front of our very eyes changing from a young princess to a 21st century icon the queen is an icon because we want an icon we need icons we like people to look up to the person who fills that role has to live up to our standards and the queen in her different ways has done that and we know that she's a woman behind it all but we want a dream and she gives us the material to justify our dreams

Channel: Queen Elizabeth II Documentaries

Views: 29,148

Keywords: British historical figures, British traditions, Buckingham Palace history, Coronation ceremony, Crowned queen, Elizabeth's personal life, Elizabethan royal family, Historical events, Iconic monarch, Modern monarch, Monarchy traditions, Palace secrets revealed, Princess Elizabeth, Royal family dynamics study, Royal jewels, Royal love story, Ruling queen, Traditional monarchy, Windsor Castle, Windsor dynasty

Id: cGQ2n-DWYMY

Length: 46min 25sec (2785 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2022