By recreating the royals’ outfits and ramping up the glamour, the hit TV drama constantly blurs the line between fact and fiction. That is what makes the show so compelling
All publicity is good publicity, they say, but the royal family is the exception that proves that rule. And recent television coverage of the royals has been – to put it mildly – a mixed bag. The new series of The Crown launched on Netflix within hours of that Prince Andrew interview. One was dependably glorious, which is precisely what royalty is supposed to be. The other was, well, a car crash seems to be the go-to analogy, although I can’t help feeling car crashes are slightly bad-taste imagery when it comes to describing royal PR disasters.
The upshot of all this is that the third series of The Crown will be required to do more heavy lifting than the previous two, in making us fall in love with it – a burden that falls in large part upon the wardrobe department. Clothes, jewellery, hair and makeup are an essential part of The Crown. From the beginning, the series has made the royals more beautiful and more glamorous than their real-life counterparts, and invited us to fall under their spell. The Crown has given the senior royals a newly glittering backstory: here, we see the Queen a spirited young beauty; Prince Philip golden-haired and square-jawed.
Continue reading...