Royals

One wants one! The Queen loves her first-ever fashion week visit

Feb 21, 2018

Queen Elizabeth looked on admiringly as models strutted their stuff at the Richard Quinn catwalk event. Source: Getty

It’s not a photograph you’d ever have expected to see – Queen Elizabeth smiling broadly alongside Anna Wintour, the famously chilly editor of Vogue‘s US edition. And Wintour is even deigning to smile enough to bare her teeth!

The Queen was making her first ever visit to London Fashion Week, where she watched the parade for a collection by new British designer Richard Quinn, and presented the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design, also to Quinn, to recognise big emerging design talents.

Wintour, whose haughty demeanour and allegedly icy treatment of staff was caricatured in the book and then the movie The Devil Wears Prada by Meryl Streep, who played the ‘Wintour’ character called Miranda Priestly with devastating bitchiness, was photographed making conversation with the monarch and even smiling happily. She did not, however, take off the large sunglasses that she’s rarely spotted without.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfbYiAsgdIv/?taken-by=theroyalfamily

Queen Elizabeth upped her own fashion game for the event, wearing her usual two-piece ensemble, but this time the pale blue wool tweed dress and jacket was embellished with aquamarine Swarovski crystals. She stuck to her signature black gloves, however, with her favourite design of handbag in patent black and matching black court shoes.

A London Fashion Week front row with a difference today #lfw pic.twitter.com/coq7Xl1IPj

— Simon Perry (@SPerryPeoplemag) February 20, 2018

The 91-year-old royal’s visit to London Fashion Week was only confirmed on Twitter two hours before her appearance, catching the media and even attendees by surprises because it the first time she’s visited the annual event in her 65-year reign.

But she wasn’t the only person with a title in attendance – Wintour, a native Brit, was made a dame for her services to fashion only last year. For that occasion, she did take off her sunglasses when receiving the actual honour, though she quickly whipped them back on for the traditional snaps outside the palace.