Heavy is the pinnacle that wears the crown. Costume designers Amy and Sidonie Roberts would know: On Netflix’s award-winning sequence, they’re those tasked with inserting it there. Making vows—to God, to nation, to staying married even when depressing—are form of a factor on The Crown, which debuts the primary a part of its ultimate season on November 16. Within the 4 seasons they’ve labored on the present, Amy and Sidonie made a promise of their very own: “Garments, not costumes.”
Which means delving into greater than historical past books to decorate the Windsor household—outfits have been impressed by every part from Lucian Freud work to Miu Miu campaigns. “I don’t assume at any level I’ve sat there and checked out our work and gone, ‘Oh, it appears like a dressing up, it appears like a caricature,’ which it so simply might be with folks like Mohamed Al-Fayed—a parody of one thing,” Sidonie says throughout a current Zoom with each designers.
The duo, who gained an outstanding-period-costumes Emmy for season three and had been nominated every following season, leaned on this mantra when confronted with their most daunting design up to now. It was recreating the outfits that Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) had been sporting on August 31, 1997, once they died in a automobile crash. “Over the course of the 4 seasons that we’ve performed, I felt essentially the most responsibility sure to try this precisely,” says Amy. “Extra so than the revenge costume, extra so than Aberfan even, due to the sensitivity of the character of that.” The outfits had been made with precision to reflect the actual ensembles “so that every one the main target was the place it wanted to be,” she provides.
In actual fact, Amy and Sidonie had been disturbed to find simply what number of photographs existed of Diana’s and Dodi’s ultimate moments. “As form of terrible as that is, you have got them from fairly various angles by way of size of jacket,” Sidonie begins. “I imply, it sounds virtually morbid speaking about it like that if I’m sincere, however you’ve bought these photographs. However they’re form of fairly grainy high quality. They’re from CCTV, lots of them within the carry. So we had been simply in a position to assume what [her exact look] is perhaps primarily based on her outfits earlier than, the kind of supplies she wore, the form of cloth.”
Diana spent lots of her ultimate days previous to the accident on Dodi’s yacht for getaways along with her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. The season’s early episodes function Girl Di’s enviable swimwear assortment. “The swimsuit is the brand new ballgown of The Crown this season,” Sidonie quips. A number of the fits, just like the blue one she famously wore whereas perched on the finish of a diving board, had been copied precisely. “It’s such an iconic second, and it wanted to be iconic in our story as properly,” says Sidonie. “So we didn’t fiddle with that every one an excessive amount of.” Others—just like the patterned one-piece she wears whereas cheekily throwing ice cubes at her sons—had been extra spontaneous, constructed from silk ’90s Japanese print present in Paris with an identical sarong.
