Queen Elizabeth has somebody on staff break from her shoes before wearing them
Before Queen Elizabeth puts on any pair of shoes, her dressmaker and close partner, Angela Kelly, break them in herself.
In Hello’s! extracts from her new book, The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, Kelly uncovers that she personally wears in the 93-year-old ruler’s shoes before any engagement.
“As has been reported a lot in the press, a flunky wears in Her Majesty’s shoes to ensure that they are comfortable and that she is always good to go,” she writes. “And yes, I am that flunky.”
Kelly includes, “The Queen has very little time to herself and not time to wear in her own shoes, and as we share the same shoe size it makes the most sense this way.”
In 2017, Stewart Parvin, who has designed the Queen’s wardrobe for 11 years, told the Evening Standard that a staff member walks the Buckingham Palace grounds in the ruler’s new shoes to break them in.
“The shoes have to be immediately comfortable,“ Parvin said. “She does get someone to wear them. The Queen can never say, ’I’m uncomfortable, I can’t walk anymore.’ She has the right to have someone wear them in.“
In 2016, the greatest collection of the Queen’s fashion to ever go on public presentation, Fashioning a Reign: 90 Years of Style from the Queen’s Wardrobe, displayed her outfits crosswise over 10 decades.
It incorporated the Queen’s wedding and coronation dresses, which were shown together for the first time. Both designed by British couturier Norman Hartnell, and worn in 1947 and 1953 respectively, the pieces were depicted via Caroline de Guitaut, guardian of the eagerly awaited show at Buckingham Palace, as a “tour de force of craftsmanship.” Hartnell sent nine sketches of the coronation gown to the Queen before she endorsed the final design.
With 75 outfits on display and in excess of 80 hats, different features incorporated the dresses, robes and coronets worn by then-Princess Elizabeth for the 1937 coronation of her folks, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, as well as more modern ensembles, for example, the Stewart Parvin neon-green outfit worn during her 90th birthday celebrations.
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