A ruffled collar, puffed sleeves, a voluminous skirt and above all a spectacular train almost 8 meters long, the dress that Lady Diana wore on her wedding day, July 29, 1981, made an impression. Behind its creation are Elizabeth Emanuel and her ex-husband David. The designer couple began collaborating with the Princess of Hearts by making her a blouse, which she wore during the photoshoot given in February 1981 to mark her engagement to Prince Charles, now King Charles III . A month later, they again signed an iconic Diana outfit. A strapless black satin dress worn during her first official public engagement alongside Prince Charles, which made headlines in the British press and propelled her to the forefront of fashion. It is therefore 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
People
magazine in an interview published April 3.
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The emergency dress
Now aged 70, the London designer is picking up her thimble again for a very special Diana wedding dress. For Princess Diana's virtual museum, she is preparing to rethink the emergency dress she made in 1981. “I was a little neurotic and I said to myself: What will happen if someone Does someone break in and steal the dress, what if something spills, there's a fire or it's stolen? , she tells
People
. So I said to myself: I’m going to make a backup dress.”
The dress that would have saved the day was not a replica of the one Diana ultimately got to wear. The silk was white, “not the deep ivory that the royal wedding dress was made of,” says Elizabeth Emanuel. It also did not feature the puffed sleeves that we have come to know and instead had “thin sleeves, more fitted to her arms” with frilly cuffs. Above all, she did not have the immense train that we find in the archive images. As for the fabric, unlike the dress Diana wore, on which the designer had embroidered the designs by hand, the replacement one was made from a ready-made fabric. However, this famous dress was never finished and the designer does not know exactly what became of it. This is why he was asked to create it again. “We never had the opportunity to see this dress on Diana and we thought it would be nice to imagine it,” explained Renae Plant, director and curator of the museum behind the commission.