Kristen Stewart's outfits in Spencer have a hidden meaning

How many looks can a princess wear in a three-day weekend? In the case of Spencer, the film dedicated to Lady D, which retraces the days when she decided to end her marriage to Prince Charles and which takes its name from her maiden name, at least 15, an average of one different outfit every 8 minutes of the film if we consider the total duration, 111 minutes. In the film directed by Larraìn, which earned Kristen Stewart a nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars, clothing plays a crucial role. Not only because Diana Spencer has gone down in history as a style icon, so much so that she even inspired Virgil Abloh for Off White's SS18, not only because the dress code plays a crucial role in British etiquette, but because the Princess of Wales perfectly understood the role that a dress could play in the media representation of her person. This is why Jacqueline Durran, who was in the running for this year's Academy Awards for Cyrano, was chosen as costume designer. With a mix of Chanel looks and archive pieces, she completed Kristen Stewart's transformation into Lady D.

In the first scenes of the film, while preparing for a weekend away, Lady Diana's maid Maggie spreads out an arsenal of dresses on the sofa: "Dinner" is written on one, "Christmas Day" on another, there is even a dress exclusively for her departure from Sandringham Castle. But what might seem like an exaggeration, a narrative twist intended by the director, for the late Princess Diana and the rest of the House of Windsor, is simply tradition, a gilded cage of rules and protocols in which there is never really room for spontaneity. As the story unfolds, costume designer Jacqueline Durran seems to increase the level of glitz in the princess' wardrobe to accentuate the sense of tragedy surrounding the crucial 1991 holiday weekend, at a time when Diana's marriage to Prince Charles is hanging by a thread. Before the Christmas Eve dinner, Diana says she wants to wear a little black dress rather than the planned sea-green satin dress because the former 'represents her mood better'. And this is the real turning point, when Diana begins to move away from her planned outfits, when everyone, including the service staff, accuses her of going mad. 

Durran's choice to exaggerate Diana's clothing in the film alludes to the fact that clothing was perhaps the last piece of autonomy the princess had for herself. A style journey that began with skirts that made her look self-conscious, frilly shirts and baggy jumpers, culminating in sensual sheath dresses designed for her by her friend Gianni Versace. In her 17 years of living with (and against) the British royal family, Diana tamed her style to make it an ally, a protest against the royal family, a symbol of rebellion in the eyes of the world. When she married the prince she did so in a shapeless flounced dress, but when he sat down in front of a television journalist to confess that he had betrayed her, Diana slipped into a tight, short, low-cut micro dress, the original revenge dress. When she called Versace to ask for some of the dresses designed by Gianni, she chose to wear the most sensual one for a shoot in Harper's Bazaar, and then bought seven more. "She was a victim of fashion", they said of her, but the late princess always came out the winner of the style challenge, even if, unfortunately, it cannot be said that her destiny was equally triumphant.