All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Welcome to part three of Fits for a King, a three-part series breaking down the fashion on The Crown, whose fourth season debuted on Netflix on Sunday, November 15. Read part one here, and part two here.
If you’ve been watching the latest season of The Crown, you probably think of Prince Charles as pedantic, or frowzy, or too into opera. But in real life, the heir to the throne seems to marvel at the most quotidian things. When he is released from his gilded cage, he looks like an alien visitor wetting his feet. He wears little neckerchiefs while he skis. He once gleefully struggled to put on a balloon hat while wearing pinstripes. Beer seems to confuse him.
And yet, despite this quirkiness, and a not-terribly-relatable wardrobe made up almost exclusively of double-breasted blazers, Prince Charles is one of the most natural clothing-wearers alive. I wonder if anyone has ever looked so ill at ease in the world but so at home in a suit.
The secret is in the tailoring, of course. Charles is an acolyte of Anderson & Sheppard, the most eccentric of Savile Row tailors. In contrast to their neighbors like Huntsman and Gieves & Hawkes, they cut their suits with a remarkable lightness, even a limpness; it’s the rebel’s bespoke cut. The shoulders aren’t padded, the silhouette looks soft, and there’s something indescribably natural. George Cortina, who regularly styles GQ cover shoots, is a devotee, and he once told me he loves A&S blazers because you can wear them “in the most casual way possible. It just feels like I threw it on.” (The suits on The Crown aren’t Anderson & Sheppard; instead, the show’s costume designer, Amy Roberts, has worked with Timothy Everest, a bespoke clothier responsible for all of the show’s tailoring.)
The Crown has undoubtedly encouraged pro-Diana sentiment—a recent Instagram post featuring Charles’s wife Camilla from Clarence House, their royal residence, was flooded with praise for the late Princess of Wales—but it’s also a curiously pro-Charles document. While the show treats the truth like bubblegum, something delicious to be stretched, one of its more wince-inducing embellishments portrays Diana giving Charles a tape of her singing a treacly number from Phantom of the Opera. (She was a fan of the show, and did indeed tape herself dancing to one of its songs, but she never gave it to Charles, and I don’t know that she ever would have as an anniversary gift.) But Charles, whose public image suffered greatly as his relationship with Diana deteriorated, has gotten a bit of restorative justice over the past decade—the kinds of things people used to rib him over, like his passions for gardening, organic produce, and sustainable urban development, now seem quite prophetic. O’Connor’s portrayal, with his mopey-dopey devotion to Camilla and admissions of alienation, gives him a much fairer shake than Diana zealots might find comfortable.
O’Connor’s comfort in suiting does an impressive amount of work here, and it’s a reminder of how much acting is wearing a costume the right way. O’Connor has the stoop right—poor posture is one of those un-royal affectations, like stupid parlor games and middle class clothes—but he also slugs his hands into his pocket with a mixture of resignation and arrogance, making him look like the family nut when he mansplains, for example, what “tabula rasa” means to Mummy (aka the Queen). Rare is the photo of the real Charles without his hands jammed into his pockets, and it captures how he is a man aware of his privilege—in order to treasure it, though, rather than to check it.
Though suiting has been at the center of menswear over the past few seasons, with designers like Virgil Abloh and Jerry Lorenzo planting it at the center of their output, it remains the default uniform of privilege. For all the high-fashion experimentation, the two leading suit cuts remain Jared Kushner-skinny—the data-driven look of the managerial class—and the overly varnished power-player cut, best seen in the Brioni suits on Trump and his cronies. (Roger Stone, whose obsession with obscure suiting rules borders on the sadomasochistic or even fascistic, is another case entirely.)
In contrast, Charles’s suits aren’t perfect. Instead, they’re perfect on him. This is the magic of bespoke clothing, but Charles’s looks can be quite ersatz—when you look at him next to Diana, in some of her more bizarre style choices, like a red monochrome suit with matching pantyhose, he looks equally quirky but relaxed. Emma Corrin, playing Diana, appears a little too slight for her clothes at times, but O’Connor’s fit is impeccably accurate. The perfection is in the lack of...well, not pretense, but the sense of tranquility. Charles looks so relaxed in his clothes that he often even looks like he’s wearing pajamas. He wears suits like an original. He is all about style, over fashion and maybe even everything else.
