It was a dress fit for a Queen – literally.
Bruce Oldfield, who designed and created Queen Camilla’s dress for the coronation ceremony on May 6, is telling all in a latest essay penned for Tatler Magazine‘s July issue.
Oldfield, 72, is a British couturier and royal favorite whose designs have also been worn by Princess Diana prior to now.
He has been dressing Her Majesty for over a decade now, but described designing her coronation gown as “the most important commission of [his] life.”
Oldfield revealed that he was asked “late last 12 months” to design the dress, which featured an intricately beaded design and Marigold-yellow coloured embroidery – even including her own two dogs on the underside of the dress’ hem.
He detailed that they did three fittings of a mock-up dress, called a “toile,” with Queen Camilla before taking a break for Christmas.
A part of Queen Camilla’s look also included an embroidered underskirt, in line with People.
The massive day in May then soon arrived – and Oldfield and Sophie Rowe, who he describes as his “sidekick and fitter extraordinaire,” were there at Westminster Abbey to be sure every part went easily by way of her wardrobe.
“We were there to be sure that Her Majesty looked fabulous and that her dress was perfectly set out,” Oldfield wrote in Tatler. “The Queen arrived wearing an easy ermine trimmed mantle (a cloak that’s worn over the dress), which we later removed – it was quite a job – and replaced with a heavily embroidered mantle.”
“When every part was fixed in place, we went back to our seats,” he continued in regards to the day. “The mantles are a regular, traditional a part of the coronation regalia and are constructed and embroidered by a specialist maker. In order that the train of the dress doesn’t show beyond the tip of either mantle, on the toile stage we were careful to be sure that the lengths of every worked perfectly together.”
And, whether or not the general public liked the dress is something that Oldfield doesn’t really take into consideration – he was only concerned with the happiness of the newly-crowned Queen Camilla.
The designer explained that through all of this, it felt like his story was being brought back around “full-circle,” as he remembered watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 together with his foster mother and siblings.
Now, 70 years later, King Charles was officially crowned after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, this past September 2022 in a grand coronation ceremony.
The ceremony was one for the history books, too, as he became the oldest King to be crowned on the age of 74.
He married Queen Camilla in 2005 at Windsor Guildhall.
Many members of the royal family were in attendance on the ceremony, including Prince Harry, who made it back to The UK for the primary time because the January release of his tell-all memoir, “Spare.”
He arrived without his wife, Meghan Markle, but only stayed for lower than 24 hours, as he needed to make it home to California in time to see his son, Archie, on his fourth birthday.
At some point after the ceremony, on Sunday, May 7, the royal family and the remainder of the general public celebrated with a giant coronation concert on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
Performers included Lionel Richie, Katy Perry, and Andrea Bocelli.
Throughout the ceremony, which was televised on BBC, King Charles’ son, Prince William, made a heartfelt speech in front of the gang, congratulating his father and paying tribute to the late Queen.
“As my grandmother said, when she was crowned, coronations are a declaration of our hopes for the long run, and I do know she’s up there fondly keeping track of us, and she or he’d be a really proud mother,” William said within the emotional speech.
