Fashion designer Bruce Oldfield talks growing up in the North East and the Queen's style legacy

A British fashion designer who created outfits for Princess Diana has recalled his favourite of the Queen's looks.

North East designer Bruce Oldfield, who was born County Durham and grew up in Ripon, famously designed for the Princess of Wales, as well as other famous clients such as Queen Rania of Jordan, Jemima Khan, Sienna Miller and Rihanna.

As a young boy in the North East in the 50s, Mr Oldfield, who was raised and educated by Barnardo's, the children's charity care facility, said the beauty of the young Elizabeth lit up a dreary post-war world. 

Prior to the death of the Queen, Mr Oldfield spoke to ITV Tyne Tees about his early memories of her - and how image and style were essential to the making of a monarch. 

Mr Oldfield said: “This sort of untouchable, beautiful creature that sort of, I mean, being up in the North East we didn't really have an awful lot to shout about so apart from the Sunday matinees being on the TV with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers it was, then, Her Majesty.

“I think that, this idea of a glamorous queen was the bit of her I liked the most, the sort of end of the 40s, the beginning of the 50s." 

He added: “There are things that I'd have done differently, but I think that period of mid-length skirts - mid-length full skirts, it's the 50s, really - swinging around, and white sandals - and sunglasses, you know, because you never really see the Queen in sunglasses more recently.

"In those days, she was always out in her sunglasses and nice hair and, she was great, she was gorgeous."

Mr Oldfield added: “Then in the evenings, of course, when she went to Paris, I think it was probably in the 60s, but she was still wearing those big full gala evening dresses - but, I mean, they were wonderful.

“They gave that regal-ness, because she was young, she could carry that regal-ness."

He added: “The Queen never did fashion, and I'm so pleased that she didn't. 

“When she became Queen she went through a period where there were vast upheavals in fashion. Girls were wearing their skirts up to their thighs and things that had never been seen before, or since, say the 1920s. She managed to sort of sideline it all.  

“The Queen was very much in the hands of people like Norman Hartnell and Hardy Amies. 

“It was very much down to well-cut, you know, understated, but pretty visible clothing. 

“You know, the Queen always did it with colour - so you knew that that canary yellow suit, that person in canary yellow, could only be Her Majesty, it couldn't be anybody else and that's what’s sort of rather charming about it."

The Queen also had a more informal style, particularly when she was spending time at her Balmoral estate in Scotland.

Mr Oldfield said: “You have the formal side, so you have the state performances and then you have the Balmoral six weeks off in the summer, where headscarves, kilts, sage green twin sets and pearls were allowed and that was the order of the day, that was the dress du jour, and that was a fantastic look. 

“The Queen in her headscarf, in a Land Rover with the corgis sort of baying to get out. That is very memorable, it is in fact as iconic, I suppose, as the long dress.”

When asked about how he will remember the Queen, he said: “Oh, always with great fondness and respect and amazement that I actually met her in a very close way.

“I suppose, grateful that we had somebody who was a constant - we all need constancy in our lives so, I think that, really.”

The remarkable life of the Queen remembered in our latest episode of What You Need To Know.