We Found All of Princess Diana’s Outfits in ‘The Crown’ Season 5 IRL
The attention to detail from The Crown’s costume designers is on another level.
While The Crown season 5 is getting some side-eye for its historical accuracy—or lack thereof—the show fully delivers when it comes to re-creating everyone’s outfits. The level of precision is on another level. And with Princess Diana continuing to take center stage, The Crown’s wardrobe department is clearly having a lot of fun finding exact replicas of her most iconic outfits. However! A lot of this season features private royal moments, meaning some liberties have inevitably been taken when it comes to Diana’s outfits. But rather than just whipping something together that feels Diana-ish for scenes behind closed doors, the costume department instead looked to some of Diana’s most iconic fashion choices—and we hunted them all down.
FYI, costume designer Amy Roberts actually spoke about taking creative license with Diana’s looks to Awards Watch last season, saying the show is “bookended by real events, like the wedding dress of Diana’s, like the engagement suit, so I think you do have to honor people’s memory of those and you do have to do that pretty accurately.” However, she notes there “are huge ways in the story where it is made up. You don’t know what happened, so I think you can run with that and be more imaginative. The process is that initial vision of it, then it’s researching and researching and then, I always tell people, then you’ve got to throw that out the window. Chuck that out, and you bring something of yourself to it, visually.”
Episode 1: “Queen Victoria Syndrome”
The Crown took a lot of liberties with Diana’s outfits in the season 5 premiere, when she and Prince Charles go on their “second honeymoon” to Italy. Because the 1991 trip was private, the show drew on the couple’s trip to Sevilla in 1992 for Diana’s floral look.
Episode 1: “Queen Victoria Syndrome”
And the leopard-print set Diana wears during her argument with Charles? The inspo for that was clearly taken from a trip the family took to the British Virgin Islands in 1990.
Episode 1: “Queen Victoria Syndrome”
Meanwhile, we couldn’t find an exact re-creation of this Princess Diana vacation outfit, but it appears to have been (at least in part) inspired by a tan button-down Di wore during a 1992 trip to Egypt.
Episode 2: “The System”
We see Diana show up in a bright-orange ’fit to an engagement at a local hospital in The Crown’s second episode, which was pretty clearly inspired by one she wore to the National English Ballet school in 1995.
Episode 2: “The System”
Princess Diana wears her iconic Harvard sweater several times throughout The Crown’s fifth season, and it’s pretty much identical to the one she wore IRL—photographed here in 1997.
Episode 2: “The System”
The Crown also managed to re-create Diana’s red balloon sweater, which she was seen wearing in real life back in 1988 (several years before the events of season 5).
Episode 3: “Mou Mou”
The Crown shows Diana meeting Mohamed Al-Fayed at the very end of episode 3, wearing an exact replica of the dress and earrings she wore to Washington’s Red Cross Headquarters in June 1997.
Episode 5: “The Way Ahead”
In an emotional moment at home, Diana is seen wearing a floral pencil skirt and blue button-down—an exact replica of an outfit she wore in 1990 while visiting a hospital with Prince Charles.
Episode 5: “The Way Ahead”
Episode 5 also gives us Diana’s iconic revenge dress moment, which The Crown re-created pretty much exactly.
Episode 7: “No Woman’s Land”
This episode opens with Diana at what looks to be a fancy gala, wearing a re-creation of a dress she wore to a charity dinner in 1996.
Episode 7: “No Woman’s Land”
The show then re-creates Princess Diana dropping Prince William off at Eaton, which actually took place in 1995.
Episode 7: “No Woman’s Land”
Diana wore this red puffer jacket on vacation in March 1994, and the show took the opportunity to put her in it for a scene where she visits her brother Earl Spencer.
Episode 7: “No Woman’s Land”
When Diana first meets her boyfriend Hasnat Khan, she wears a yellow dress with a thin black belt and a turtleneck—which appears to be a nod to the orange suit moment Diana had in November 1995.
Episode 7: “No Woman’s Land”
Diana visits Hasnat at work several times on The Crown, and during one of those visits, the show re-creates an outfit she wore in November 1992 while in France.
Episode 7: “No Woman’s Land”
We also see her visit Hasnat in a green checked blazer and matching turtleneck, which Diana wore IRL while vacationing with Prince William in 1993.
Episode 8: “Gunpowder”
I think we can all agree that The Crown re-created the vibes of Diana’s Martin Bashir interview pretty accurately—down to her hair!
Episode 10: “Decommissioned”
We see Diana attend a ballet on The Crown’s final episode of the season, wearing a re-creation of a gown she wore in June 1995.
Mehera Bonner is a celebrity and entertainment news writer who enjoys Bravo and Antiques Roadshow with equal enthusiasm, She was previously entertainment editor at Marie Claire and has covered pop culture for over a decade.
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