Armani Follow

Designer to the stars Bruce Oldfield has been remembering the first time he met Princess Diana when she was introduced to him before her wedding in 1981 when she was still a shy 19 year old. Bruce (below) said 'When she started she didn't have a clue,' he recalls. 'She was a little country bumpkin, a typical Sloane with cardigans and Laura Ashley see-through skirts. She wasn't at all sophisticated like, say, Kate Middleton is now.' It was Oldfield who helped oversee Diana's transformation into glossy style icon until, in 1990, she stopped using him almost overnight, without explanation. 'It was irritating at the time, but I have to remember that I used to wear Armani all the time and then I just stopped, I'd had enough, and I think it was the same with her,' he says. 'I also think with her when she tried to shrug off her royal duties she shrugged off all the accoutrements of that, and part of that was the kind of wardrobe we would make. But I tell you now, as far as I'm concerned she looked the best with clean hair and a white shirt and jeans, rather than all dressed up. She looked just fabulous like that.' Diana's putative daughter-in-law, of course, has been heralded as a potentially natural royal style successor - and Oldfield, for once, is complimentary. 'Of the babies, I do think Kate Middleton actually looks very good. She always looks quite neat and tidy, with a nice silhouette, not overly done. She looks clean and fresh.' Praise indeed - although since opening his own bridal line it is hard not to think that Oldfield is gunning to do her wedding dress. 'Well I wouldn't say no, would I?' he laughs.