Fashioning the Crown, Justine Picardie’s part-history, part-critique of 20th-century royal dressing, has emerged at a difficult time for the monarchy. And not just because of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor. Another royal crisis is the lack of a central leading lady. 

For well over a century it’s been an unbroken line, one queen giving way to another. Queen Victoria was succeeded by wasp-waisted Queen Alexandra, who handed over to toque-topped Queen Mary. Then came the pastel-clad Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother), followed by Elizabeth II. But who has succeeded her? There’s Camilla, obviously, and Princess Kate. But for reasons many and various, neither is the main event. Certainly not like the late Queen, blazing away in neon on the Buckingham Palace balcony. Even at ninety-six, Elizabeth II had star power. 

So too, of course, did Princess Diana. The Windsors’ most famous clothes horse, she gets almost no mention here. The book stops with the 1953 coronation, and even if it hadn’t, Diana’s inclusion would have been problematic. A main theme is that the frumpy clothes worn by Windsor women are an outward expression of inner virtue. Of suitability for ruling. Snappy dressers, on the other hand, spell right royal trouble. 

Thus Queen