Olly Alexander in a red codpiece (a suggestive, harness-like accessory attached to the front of men’s hose) at Eurovision. Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes. Beckhams-on-the-Cotswolds. There are some visions which sear themselves indelibly on the brain, no matter how hard we might try to delete them.
Which emblems leap to mind when the rest of the world thinks about Britishness? For Gucci’s new designer, Sabato De Sarno, it’s Princess Diana in her beloved Philadelphia Eagles green and silver varsity jacket, on the school run with Princes William and Harry in 1991. “It seems to have been stolen from a wardrobe that is not hers,” he told The Guardian in advance of his Cruise 2025 show, held in London on Monday night. “I like personalities that speak about something contradictory.”
Designers, especially Italian ones, seem fascinated by British traditions and the British reflex of subverting them. Diana, increasingly, is a rich mine. Whatever you thought of her style at the time, with distance it becomes more interesting; a distinctive time capsule, serving as a message board for whatever was going on in her life at the time. She was consummate at turning the glamorous clothes she felt herself trapped into wearing into a form of propaganda for whatever she wished to communicate to the public, without having to go down the tiresome route of persuading the courtiers at the palace to authorise a press release.
Fun Mum Diana (versus stuffy Charles) brought out the baseball caps and American college jackets. Staggeringly young, newly married Diana, keen to please her new in-laws, saw her in checks and tweeds at Balmoral. Then came the pussy bows as she willed herself older and those “fairy tale” ball gowns.