On April 29, 1929, the cover of the weekly
Time
it was a three-year-old girl with a pastel yellow dress and a bored face.
Her
headline, P'incess Lilybet,
mimicked the childlike pronunciation of her own name.
The internal chronicle started gloomy, speculating on the necessary death of three men for the birthday girl to reign (her grandfather, her uncle and her father), but it ended with a very different tone on the children's floor of the Selfridge's department store in London.
“Before there was only pink, blue and white,” explained a shop assistant, “but now almost every mother wants to buy a pale yellow dress or bonnet like Princess Elizabeth's.”
The girl ended up reigning 70 years.
Primrose yellow never left her (she wore it to her 90th birthday and to William and Kate's wedding).
It is one of the shades that appear in the Pantone Queen
color guide
, a limited edition of the typical fan-shaped sampler with the silhouette of the queen (coat, hat and eternal Launer bag) in light blue, coral, lilac, pistachio... Like millions of Objects inspired by Her Majesty - from souvenirs a couple of pounds to works of art in the hundreds of thousands - the Pantone guide exudes a certain white humor and is immediately recognizable.
Keys to pop culture, which was born and flourished throughout the century that Elizabeth II lived, while the idea of the monarchy sank into obsolescence.
More information
Follow live all the information after the death of Elizabeth II
Isabel II, the icon, crossed all strata, from high culture to
kitsch
.
The ubiquitous Solar Queen, an ironic toy that waves when the light hits it, illustrates the cover of the book
Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture
, one of its authors, Pauline MacLaran, chose it because “it exemplifies the magnitude of the cultural industry around royalty: there is a market for everything, even the most absurd”.
“The queen is a brand,” this Royal Holloway
marketing
professor says by videoconference .
“As the longest-running monarch in history, she has represented stability in a changing world and her appearance reinforced that image;
she was never a
fashion victim
like her sister Margarita or Lady Di, her understated outfits in cozy pastel colors represented her values more than her personality.”
For MacLaran, the queen knew how to maintain her “mystique”: “She did not become a celebrity (like some of her relatives), she always remained above her;
even to those who don't support the monarchy, she was someone who never did anything out of character, who you took for granted, who was just always there, unflappable."
For another scholar, Christina Jordan, editor of the book of essays
Realms of Royalty
,
the face of Elizabeth II "literally represents the monarchy in popular culture and in everyday life: on stamps, coins, souvenirs... but also in the works of Andy Warhol or in the subversive gaze of the Sex Pistols”.
the most portrayed
The director of the National Portrait Gallery once said that the queen was "the most photographed woman in history" (in that museum alone there are 967 photos and paintings of Elizabeth II).
Many are from the official photographers of the royal house.
In the fifties, she posed all ermine and royal jewels for Cecil Beaton, and romantic and glamorous for Dorothy Wilding;
in the seventies, Patrick Lichfield began to have access to more informal images (the queen laughing, sailing, with her dogs in the field).
Buckingham commissioned up to 200 portraits from different artists, such as the Italian Pietro Annigoni who drew her introspectively: "I didn't want to paint her as a movie star," he said, "but as a monarch alone with the problems of her responsibility."
Elizabeth II adapted to the times and posed for Annie Leibovitz in the privacy of Windsor, for Justin Mortimer (who portrayed her decomposed, with her head separated from her body, on a yellow background), for the holographic artist Chris Levine and for Lucien Freud.
This latest portrait, from 2001, outraged and fascinated alike;
some critics consider it the best of Isabel II, due to its crudeness;
others posted that she pulled it out looking like her dogs.
The queen, according to her biographer, limited herself to thanking Freud for his work and commenting: "I really enjoyed seeing how he mixes the colors."
From three to 86 years.
1929 and 2012 covers of TIME magazine with Elizabeth II as the protagonist.
The one on the left, when she was still a princess, was celebrating her third birthday.
The one on the right, the Diamond Jubilee, the 60 years of her reign.
official portraits.
In the 1950s, the official image of the newly crowned queen swathed in ermine, all pomp and circumstance, was by photographer Cecil Beaton. (EFE)
punk anthem.
Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren with fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, then his partner, wearing a T-shirt with one of the collages artist Jamie Reid designed for the band's God Save the Queen single.
The controversial song, released in 1977, The Monarch's Silver Jubilee (although the band denied the coincidence was voluntary), was censored by the BBC. Mirrorpix (Mirrorpix via Getty Images)
Warholian.
“I want to be as famous as the Queen of England,” Andy Warhol once said, portraying her in a series of diamond dust screen prints in 1985. WIktor Szymanowicz (NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A different portrait.
In 1997 the queen posed in Buckingham Palace's yellow drawing room for artist Justin Mortimer.
The painter explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that she had separated his head from her body to illustrate "his separation from her and her isolation from modern life."
Oli Scarff (Getty Images)
The most controversial.
In 2001 Lucian Freud portrayed the queen (on the left) arousing contradictory opinions, for some critics the portrait is one of the best of Elizabeth II due to its crudeness, others criticized that he took her out unfavored and even with a beard.
Steve Parsons - PA Images (PA Images via Getty Images)
Oscar for the queen.
In 2006 Stephen Frears directed The Queen in which the Oscar-winning Helen Mirren played the queen facing Diana's death.
The script is by Peter Morgan, who years later would write the series The Crown.
royal humour.
The ironic Solar Queen, she waves when she gives her the light.
The now classic souvenir, whose most refined version is from the Kikkerland design label, can be found in all British souvenir shops.
Prisma by Dukas (Universal Images Group via Getty)
A breath.
“The lightness of being (pink)”, by Chris Levine, nearly tripled its asking price at Sotheby's in 2018 (£150,000).
It is a discard of the session that the holographic artist had with the Queen in 2004 to make the portrait "Equanimity".
The image portrays a moment in which Levine asked the monarch to close her eyes to rest from the strong light necessary to make the hologram.
The auction house touted it as "an accidental masterpiece."Samir Hussein (Getty Images for Sotheby's)
A tea with Elizabeth.
Souvenirs of the Diamond Jubilee, celebrated in 2012, in a store in Trafalgar Square in London.
Teacups, plates, teaspoons and thimbles are the most recurrent objects in traditional souvenirs. Oli Scarff (Getty Images)
Designer souvenirs.
Pantone Queen is a commemorative souvenir of Elizabeth II's 60 years on the throne, created as a limited edition by Pantone and the Leo Burnett advertising agency London.andy rudak ltd
In parachutes.
Stunt doubles for the queen and Daniel Craig jump out of a helicopter over London's Olympic Stadium at the opening of the 2012 Games. The real queen filmed the scenes leading up to the actor playing 007 picking her up at Buckingham Palace. Cameron Spencer (Getty Images)
Royal Banksy.
Queen Ziggy is a mural by street artist Banksy in Bristol in which he fuses two British icons;
the queen and Ziggy Stardust, the character created by David Bowie. SWNS (SWNS / SWNS / ContactPhoto)
It's not them.
In 2015, artist Alison Jackson created a series of fake photographs in which actors recreated domestic scenes of the royal family like this selfie.
The Queen also appears in other images changing diapers for her grandchildren or using the toilet.- / SWNS / ContactoPhoto (-/ SWNS / ContactoPhoto)
An unknown young woman.
The Netflix series The Crown conquered millions of viewers with an empathetic and emotional vision of Elizabeth II.
In her first season, she portrayed a young, lovesick queen, unknown to generations who could only imagine her as a mature woman © Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection (© Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection / Cordon Press)
pin-up
For a few years now, the urban artist Pegasus has reinterpreted Elizabeth II as a young pin-up girl with long legs and stiletto heels.
"I wanted to imagine what the queen was like when she took off her crown and let her hair down," says the artist. PEGASUS
This phlegmatic restraint has also contributed to its status as a cultural icon according to experts.
"We know very little of the queen's views and personality, she never exposed herself, she always spoke from the crown, there was little to laugh at, she wasn't an obvious object of ridicule like Prince Charles," says MacLaran, whose favorite portrayal of the monarch is in fact the satirical
Spitting Image
(the original version of
The Guignol Dolls),
where the joke was precisely the solemnity of Elizabeth II.
Even the less official portraits, such as Banksy's street mural in which Ziggy Stardust's lightning crosses her face, or Alison Jackson's fake selfies, in which a double poses taking mocking photos with her family or sitting on the toilet , are relatively benevolent with the character.
"The Royal House's careful handling of their private affairs strengthened the queen as an icon," notes Jordan.
"Much is known about Diana's life, or Harry and Meghan's, but the Queen's intimacy has always remained secret, fueling people's curiosity and the creativity of the cultural industry."
Movies like
The Queen
and especially the Netflix series
The Crown
, would come to fill "that void, filling it, in large part, with imagination and feelings that dazzled the public."
graffiti and punk
In the mid-1980s, Andy Warhol, who once said he wanted "to be more famous than the Queen of England," produced a colorful series of screen prints of Elizabeth II similar to those he had done of Marilyn or Elizabeth Taylor in the 1960s.
In bright colors and with diamond dust, the last copy auctioned reached 140,000 euros at Sotheby's.
Warhol's series was the first pop image, "other than the boring official portraits of the queen," recalls Pegasus, whose stencils are a rising value in the street art market.
He has portrayed the queen on several occasions as a pin-up, scantily clad and in stilettos, over slogans such as “
The queen is in
” (the queen is cool).
“My twisted mind wanted to peek at the person we never saw behind closed doors, at the queen when she took off her crown and let her hair down, you knew that behind it was a person with the full range of human emotions… I always admired the complete control she exercised over her image," says the artist by mail, who has always considered the queen "a symbol of strength."
"The royal family is like the marmite, you love it or you hate it," admits the graffiti artist, referring to the yeast extract paste, as British an emblem as the monarch herself.
“We love our Queen”, sang the Sex Pistols on
God save the queen
,
the irreverent 1977 single in which they also said that he was not a human being and that he was running a fascist regime.
Not ten years later The Smiths published
The queen is dead
,
which directly fantasized about the death of "her Lowness of her" as "something wonderful", but it no longer aroused so much controversy.
Jamie Reid's collage illustrating the punk band's album
,
in which the song title with cut-out lyrics as in a kidnapping note tearing the mouth and eyes of a young Elizabeth II, can be seen in the National Portrait Gallery.
Malcolm MacLaren, the band's astute manager, organized a concert on a boat in front of the Palace of Westminster to coincide with the Silver Jubilee celebration (although the band always denied that the coincidence of the release with the event was voluntary).
MacLaren ended up arrested, but took advantage of the controversy to create with his partner at the time, the designer Vivienne Westwood, a series of t-shirts with various versions of the image (with
punk safety pins
closing his mouth and swastikas in his eyes).
One of them can be seen in a display case at the Met Museum in New York.
Even the most subversive version of the Queen ended up institutionalized.
In 1977 the single was censored by the BBC.
In 2012, the network broadcast the London Olympic Games in whose opening video the first chords and its chorus sounded.
At that ceremony, the Queen agreed to shoot a short film with Daniel Craig playing James Bond.
"It's my favorite cultural representation of the Queen," says Jordan, specializing in the analysis of the Jubilees, the anniversaries on the throne that are celebrated with concerts and great mass and free celebrations in "media events carefully orchestrated by the royal house to produce collective memories.
At the Olympics, Agent 007 would pick up the royal Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace to take her to the Olympic Stadium by helicopter.
And both (their stunt doubles) parachuted onto center court.
Seconds later the real queen appeared in her perfect pale pink dress in the stands.
"That revealed a bit of Elizabeth II's sense of humor," says Jordan, "and the monarchy's desire to modernize."
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