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Queen Elizabeth II is an unequivocal fashion icon.
Not only did she sit on the front row at Peckham-based Richard Quinn’s Autumn/ Winter 2018 show (the first fashion show the 93-year-old monarch had ever attended), but her cycle of skirt-suits and tweed coats in an array of colours (lest we forget that zingy lime number she modelled for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding) is something to be seriously coveted.
Now for the first time, the Queen, our longest reigning monarch with an impressive 67 years on the throne, has allowed her ‘Personal Advisor and Curator and In-house designer’, 51-year-old Angela Kelly to pen a book about her.
Titled The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe, the book sees Kelly, who has served at Buckingham Palace since 1994, reveal a handful of the monarch’s style secrets.
This is the first time the monarch has allowed a member of her staff to do so.
Among one of the book’s most surprising revelations is the fact that Kelly personally wears all of the Queen’s new shoes to break them in.
She writes: “The Queen has very little time to herself and not time to wear in her own shoes, and as we share the same shoe size it makes the most sense this way.”
Further on in the book, Kelly notes that when the Queen met Michelle Obama in 2009 (and Michelle controversially gave the Her Royal Highness a big hug), the pair bonded over the long day they’d both had, which had left them both with “sore feet” due to their heels.
Kelly also reveals in the book that each year, prior to Royal Ascot, she displays decoy hats on a table in her workroom in order to prevent eagle-eyed colleagues from sharing the colour of the Queen’s Ascot hat with bookmakers.
The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe is published by HarperCollins and is available to buy now for £14.99.
