In 1985, the Observer explored Diana, Princess of Wales’s evolution from ‘chubby-faced teenager’ to ‘glamorous mother’ and national obsession, probing the question, ‘What is a princess for?’
The answer: ‘A princess is for looking at.’ Diana was ‘the first convincing princess of the video age’; she ‘raised princess-watching to fever pitch’. Her face on magazine covers guaranteed a sales boost: ‘She’s the one they want to see,’ Bob Houston, of Royalty magazine commented. After her first public appearance in 1980, Diana became an upper-class Alice, passing ‘through the royal looking-glass’: a shrinking body, blonder hair and a designer wardrobe that was both extravagant (reportedly costing £1,500 a week) and accessibly aspirational. Her choices were easily, widely copied; she was ‘dressing to the aspirations of young women in banks and buildings societies and shops and offices’.
