“It was literally a dress fit for a Queen,” said Bruce Oldfield, who designed and made Queen Camilla’s coronation gown on May 6, tells all in a new essay for Tatler Magazine’s July issue. Oldfield, 72, is a British couturier and royal favourite whose designs were previously worn by Princess Diana.
He has been dressing Her Majesty for more than a decade, but designing her coronation gown was “the biggest commission of [his] life.” Oldfield revealed that he was asked “late last year” to design the dress, which featured an intricately beaded design and Marigold-yellow coloured embroidery – even including her own two dogs on the dress’s hem.
He explained that they did three fittings of a mock-up dress, known as a “toile,” with Queen Camilla before taking a Christmas break.
According to People, Queen Camilla’s outfit also included an embroidered underskirt, NYT reported.
“We were there to make sure Her Majesty looked fabulous and that her dress was perfectly set out,” Oldfield wrote in Tatler. “The Queen arrived wearing a simple ermine-trimmed mantle (a cloak that is worn over the dress), which we later removed – it was quite a job – and replaced with a heavily embroidered mantle.”
“When everything was in place, we went back to our seats,” he said later in the day.
The big day came in May, and Oldfield and Sophie Rowe, whom he refers to as his “sidekick and fitter extraordinaire,” were on hand at Westminster Abbey to ensure everything went smoothly in terms of her wardrobe.
And, regardless of whether or not the public liked the dress, Oldfield was only concerned with the happiness of the newly-crowned Queen Camilla.
The designer explained that all of this felt like it was bringing his story “full-circle,” as he remembered watching Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation with his foster mother and siblings in 1953.
After the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in September 2022, King Charles was officially crowned 70 years later in a grand coronation ceremony. The ceremony was also historic, as he became the oldest King to be crowned at the age of 74.