Diana's age at time of marriage.

[Peedoffo]

I'm in my 20s so I really don't remember Diana. I did more reading on the subject and I can't believe the establishment thought it was ok to marry a 19 year old off to a man 13 years older than her who had no interest in her. No wonder she struggled this was the 1980s as well not the Victorian times! Could anyone around then tell me , why did her family back/support the marriage? Was there any concerns from the public ? I would be horrified at the thought of marrying my DD off at 19 to a much older man who wasn't really interest.

@speakout That is extremely unfair. She championed up and coming British designers. When she got engaged her style was sloane ranger, which was very fashionable amongst her set. What she wore changed a lot over time.

And because she followed fashion, some outfits looking back are lovely and some do not stand the test of time. She wore trousers often at a time when in lots of offices women could still not wear trousers.

There’s a story that when she got engaged she went into Harvey Nicks to buy something and they didn’t recognise her and had no idea who she was so she just bought what they suggested , which was of course far too old and frumpy for her .

17 year old me had a blouse with a pie crust collar, after Diana made them fashionable. I think I got it somewhere like Etam. I definitely felt bang on-trend wearing it.

OMG Etam!! I remember getting a red and gold striped jacket from there. I thought it was the bees knees. I must have looked like a circus master...or the tent. Lol.

Hello wasn't around then - and she was wearing the fashion of her 'set' which then got picked up more widely. It became a hugely popular look.

YY to Etam! And Chelsea Girl - both sought after plastic bags that we used instead of sensible school bags.

She wasn't wearing fashion that was revealing. And she wasn't wearing cutting-edge fashion. But she was wearing fashionable clothes. Middle-aged women at the time were mainly not wearing trousers, or if they were they wore slacks. I think you forget how middle-aged women dressed then. Or you are your mother did wear cutting-edge fashion? Diana wore smart trousers and jeans a lot.
Etam was the height of teenage fashion for ordinary kids back then, and they copied a lot of her styles. Hairdressers were also inundated with young women wanting their hair cut like hers.
I always saw Eurotrash as very revealing and breasts on display, she did not dress like that.

"Princess Diana: Many 80s fashion statements started with Princess Diana, even though she professed herself entirely disinterested in fashion. Beloved by the world since she first publicly appeared with Prince Charles early in 1981, people noted and emulated her every move. Diana was the force behind iconic 80’s clothing as diverse as the padded shoulder and feminine patterned silk blouses, high waisted jeans, statement shoulder pads, the winged ‘Diana’ hairstyle, and pearl earrings. She also sparked bizarre 80’s trends such as wearing several watches at once."

www.thepearlsource.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-80s-fashion/

The other fashion icon teenagers emulated was Madonna. That was a very young look but not really suitable for a Princess.

I think eighties fashion as a whole was pretty dire. So looking back I can see why people might question how fashionable Diana was. But at the time Diana and Madonna were probably the two biggest influences on what teenager girls and young women wore.

Middle aged women were wearing knee length sensible skirts and Dr Scholls sandals, or slacks, or lame dresses.

*Byfleet · Yesterday 17:42
I am 60, about the same age as Diana and I grew up in the U.K. (London). I do not recognise or remember all these assertions that she was fashionable at all.

To my eyes at the time her style made her look much older than her years. I thought then that her clothes would have been copied by middle aged women who bought Hello magazine. Absolutely nobody I knew, including my mother, would have considered her stylish or fashionable. Until her divorce she looked to me at the time like a young woman dressing like her upper class country living mother or grandmother. Later on she developed her own style which my friends and I would have characterised as euro trash*

I think you’re more of a haverin cuddy than an expert in fashion from by gone days.

1981 we were listening to Duran Duran, Kim Wilde, Dire Straits, Depeche Mode, Abba, Buck's Fizz, Shakin' Stevens, Ultravox, John Lennon.
If we were lucky we had a Sony Walkman.
TV was 3 channels. Phones were fixed to the wall.

Things she wore in the 80s were considered fashionable - I was a year younger than her and I remember buying a blouse with a massive sailor collar on it because she'd worn something similar. Needless to say, it was hideous and didn't stand the test of time.

I thought the outfit she wore by the river at Balmoral on her honeymoon was awful - a frumpy tweed suit if I remember correctly and her wedding dress looked liked a crumpled paper bag.

Her fashions improved in later years but I don't know if it was down to her or if she had stylists by then.

Yes I remember those clothes being quite fashionable but also she was dressing as a typical Sloane.

I remember the wedding dress and I did like it (by designers David and Elizabeth Emmanuel wasn't it?) it was a big deal at the time. It was a pity it creased up so much (from sitting in the carriage?) or maybe it was supposed to look like that? Otherwise I am surprised that the makers didn't choose the fabric more carefully. But I liked it, it was a bit different, quite 'new romantic'. Which fitted in with the times.

I think it did crease more than it was thought it would, but that fabric does. I didn't notice at all, I thought she looked stunning and fairytale, but my mum went on and on about the creases, it's all she could say about it. I think she was just a bit jel .

I loved the tweed suit and she looked radiant in the photos.
I liked the wedding dress, it was of its time. Fabric choice wasn't great.
I thought the sailor collar outfit was terrible.

"Lady Di" shoes, ie ballet pumps ideally with a little strap across, were all the rage! The frill collar blouses were in fashion, the very early 80s were New Romantics era and it was tied in with that.

I also liked the cord breeks/knickerbockers she wore but not the pink jumper.

Tweed became very fashionable after that - it wasn’t considered frumpy at the time

The blouson shape of her honeymoon tweed jacket was also super stylish at the time. My mother had a similar one, and I coveted it!

I liked that she dressed fashionably and young. I think it helped younger people relate to her more.

Yeah but no! Average age of first marriage for a woman was 23.1. And that figure is skewed by some women getting married for the first time in their 80s. The 26.9 is for all women getting married, some for the second or subsequent times. In fact if you look at the ONS figures almost a quarter of women getting married for the first time were under 20 and over half were in the 20 - 24 year old age group. Young marriage was very common.

I didn’t get married until my early 30’s and most of my school friends had been married for years and had children by the time I tied the knot.

The age gap was more unusual but not so much so as to raise many eyebrows.

The age gap was unusual. And Charles was not even a young 32. He has always seemed older.

I don't think Diana's age or the age gap was unusual, especially for people from the aristocracy. Even in the 80s, many aristocratic women were expected to get "finished" and then quickly find a husband, as had been the practice for a long time. Diana was 20; her mother had been 18 when she married a man 12 years her senior; the late Queen was 21. The upper classes had not caught up with the notion in the general populace that a young woman might pursue higher education, have a career, and marry a bit later.