Fashion plaudits for Queen Elizabeth’s impeccable style

her evolve a personal style that wins praise from unlikely quarters, including from a young French designer who worked for a decade with Jean Paul Gaultier.
“She has her own style and it works extremely well for her,” Alexandre Vauthier told AFP.
“It’s really her DNA. She is the only person to dress this way, which makes her instantly recognisable.”
The 86-year-old monarch’s diamond jubilee this weekend marks 60 years of travelling, handshaking, and meeting global leaders as Britain’s head of state.
On the biggest ceremonial occasions she appears in state dresses, jewels and even a crown, but humbler public engagements are no less challenging on the wardrobe front.
Her stylists, always British, must ensure that no garment is transparent, too tight or too short, and consider possible weather conditions — including weighting her skirt hemlines to avoid embarrassment in a gust of wind. For most of the hundreds of public engagements she carries out every year, the queen appears in a brightly-coloured outfit with a matching hat, neat handbag and sensible, yet elegant shoes. Before any state or Commonwealth visit, her designers study meanings attached to colours, sleeve lengths and symbols in the country, both to avoid accidental offence and to be gracious to her hosts.
For her historic visit to Ireland in May 2011, the queen wore emerald green, the country’s emblematic colour, and for a reception at Dublin Castle she sported a dress embroidered with no fewer than 2 000 tiny shamrocks.
On the first visit by a British monarch since the republic gained independence, her dress was a signal as powerful as the few words of Irish with which she began her keynote speech.
“Elizabeth in her youth was fun, vibrant, exciting and spontaneous,” royal historian Kate Williams said.
“And now we see a very different queen: she often is quite unsmiling; she’s very fond of duty; she is very dignified.” — AFP.