While many regard Princess Diana as a fashion icon, she was not necessarily considered a modern trendsetter at the time—especially early on in her marriage—according to a fashion historian. Speaking exclusively to Marie Claire, Mark Coombes, Creative Director and editor behind Forgotten 80’s on Instagram, feels that Princess Diana’s status as a trendsetter is “a powerful piece of mythology.” The fashion historian says, “Diana often avoided major trends rather than driving them, and that restraint became part of her later appeal.”
“Diana was an aristocrat, but she wasn’t part of the fashionable aristocratic set of the time,” Coombes says. “She was very young, deeply shy, and came into public life suddenly and unprepared.” Coombes compares then-Lady Diana Spencer to the “true Tatler girls” like Princess Caroline or Plum Sykes, who were part of the “London and European aristocratic fashion crowd” and “were already fluent in fashion, wore the newest designers, and moved confidently through that world.” Lady Diana Spencer, who was working as a nanny before her wedding, “simply wasn’t part of that circle.”
