Make no mistake, this will be the dress of her life. The gown Camilla wears when she is crowned next to King Charles at Westminster Abbey on May 6 will define her like no other dress has yet done or will.
So perhaps it’s understandable that the news that the Queen Consort chose Diana’s favorite designer Bruce Oldfield to create her coronation dress came as a bit of a surprise. Wearing a man’s gown inextricably linked to your husband’s late ex-wife on such a milestone day can be seen as a risky move.
I, however, feel precisely the opposite. Bruce, whom I have known for many years, is the perfect match for Camilla.
More than being the ideal craftsman for such an occasion in terms of style and sartorial skills, he is the dream man for such a high-pressure occasion. The kind of designer who puts a woman in a dress and gasps with her, as thrilled as she is, will invest as much as Camilla in her coronation dress.
Back in Black: Diana at the Barbican in 1985 and Camilla at a movie premiere in London in 2019
Gala glamour: The Princess and Charles’ 70th birthday party at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel in 1988
And forget about the possibility of it being as unnecessary as Meghan’s wedding dress or the possibility that Diana’s Emanuel-designed bridal gown crumpled as she stepped out of her fairy-tale carriage. If I know Bruce, he’ll be there that day, pinning Camilla perfectly until the very last moment. Camilla simply couldn’t be in better hands.
Besides he knows. For all his past relationships with Diana, Bruce, 72, has been dressing Camilla, 75, for a decade with great success, and they’ve become like a house on fire. After all, choosing a designer you’ve never worked with for such a big event would be like using a hairdresser for the first time on your wedding day. As he himself puts it: ‘He’s a good egg. We get bloody well.’
But there’s more to Camilla’s choice than Bruce’s talent for making inner corsets — ideal for holding onto a middle-aged figure — or the fact that she’s British, an important consideration for an occasion of such significance. Camilla could have easily walked away from her to not invite comparison to Diana. But I think it shows that he’s no longer avoiding comparisons to Diana – because that battle is finally over.
And Coronation Day will show that. Confident in a way almost unrecognizable from the early days of her relationship with Charles after Diana’s death, Camilla doesn’t need to over-analyze her choices. He could just be himself.
Perhaps there’s a chance that her choice of Bruce might even be a subconscious nod to the late princess, a sort of olive branch. Surely, despite all the pain of the past, Diana’s sons will appreciate her choice that day, a recognition of their mother somehow. And really, given that both women loved Charles so much, is it any wonder that Bruce won both of their hearts as well?
Bruce has a lot in common with both women – surprisingly warm, and with a terrific natural empathy, as he famously did as Diana, and a sense of humor similar to Camilla’s.
Today, Bruce is understandably tight-lipped about the coronation. But he spoke of his relationships with both royals, saying: ‘I gave Diana her glamor and Camilla her confidence.’
After meeting Diana in 1980, when she asked him to make her something to wear to the Oxford Street Christmas lights switch-on, he moved her away from the Sloane Ranger style to something far more glamorous. He was, he says, the ‘perfect client’. She once wrote to him that she was his ‘No. 1 fan’.
