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Cape Town – Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana undoubtedly had very different styles, but there's one accessory neither royal could leave the palace without.
Her Royal Highness, The Queen, keeps it simple with a skirt suit. She wouldn't dare to wear beige though, so instead, she dons almost every colour of the rainbow. Royal biographer, Robert Hardman even recalled the queen saying at one point, "I can never wear beige. Nobody will know who I am."
Princess Diana, however, strayed quite often from royal protocol, but became a fashion icon because of it. And after her separation from Prince Charles, she even wore the famous "revenge dress" – an off-the-shoulder fitted little black dress, complete with a deep v showing just a little bit of cleavage.
That night attending the Vanity Fair party, Princess Diana completed her look with one accessory both she, and Queen Elizabeth, are rarely seen without though: a bag. But the princess and the queen carried them for two very different reasons.
For Princess Diana, her bag – usually a clutch – wasn't necessarily used to keep her belongings. In fact, Andy Hindmarch, a designer who worked with the royal, told The Telegraph Princess Diana referred to her clutches as "cleavage bags".
"She would come and see us with no bodyguards or any fuss. We used to laugh when we designed what she called her 'cleavage bags', little satin clutches which she would cover her cleavage with when she stepped out of cars."
IN CASE YOU STILL WEREN'T CONVINCED PRINCESS DIANA MADE USE OF THIS CLEVER HACK:
Queen Elizabeth doesn't carry clutches, but she does always have her Launer handbag with her. And PEOPLE reports, again, it's not just to carry pocket tissues and the palace keys.
Hugo Vickers said, "It would be very worrying if you were talking to the Queen and saw the handbag move from one hand to the other."
The royal historian revealed the subtle move was to signal the queen's handlers to intervene in conversation when she was ready to, quite frankly, escape the chat. "It would be done very nicely," he explained though. "Someone would come along and say, 'Sir, the Archbishop of Canterbury would very much like to meet you.'"
And no one will be the wiser.
(Photos: Getty Images)
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