Fashion designer Kate Sylvester pays tribute to the Queen, an enduring influence throughout her life, career and design.

OPINION: I have been crying all morning, starting when I burst into tears in the middle of Bestie café on hearing the news. The Queen is dead. My Queen.

I fucking loved the Queen. I am a staunch monarchist, love the whole glorious, mad, fascinating institution. I have a souvenir mug collection to prove it. But I especially love the diminutive but steely strong beating heart that has held it all together for 70 years. 

My childhood was shaped by a bunch of strong, eccentric, and stylish family matriarchs and growing up in the 70s and 80s in New Zealand, the Queen basically was family, she was such a ubiquitous presence. She could effortlessly have joined Aunties Rita, Betty and Judy for G&Ts and pastel cigarettes, or swapped corgi stories with my corgi owning grandmother. 

We love a good argument in my family and being a bit contrary makes for great argument, hence I’ve always been the punk who wore pink, the socialist who loves monarchy. 

It’s how I approach my design and this was most perfectly illustrated with ‘Royally Screwed’, my summer 2008 tribute to all things royal, even the bad things. A huge part of what I love about the royals are their foibles. Historically I love the mad kings, the beheadings, and recently I’ve loved the gaffes and foot-in-mouth moments, the Christmas weigh-ins, as much as I admire the incredible hard work and the aspirational moments. 

Of course, I have a total soft spot for the love stories. The Queen and her beloved Philip, but also through thick and thin, through global Diana-mania, I have always been on the tiny (but hopefully growing) team Charles and Camilla. Now that’s a love story of loyalty and perseverance against all odds. 

And it’s about to have its happy ever after, the climatic scene in Westminster Abbey when he will be crowned King with his beloved Camilla as consort. I’ll be toasting them, drinking bubbles from my newest coronation mug. In fact we actually produced our own souvenir mug as part of the Royally Screwed collection. 

It was a very anarchic take on royalty. I particularly embraced ‘high’ royal sartorial elements. We had coronation lace, tiaras, taffeta couture and military uniforms. I also tapped into the hunting tweeds and tartan checks of royal weekends, but then we had a glorious time fucking them all up. The lace was see-through, the couture got literally chopped up, the jackets were skew-whiff and held together with medals. 

(Speaking of medals, they got us on to the cover of Sydney Morning Herald the morning after our Fashion Week show for all the wrong reasons: we had accidentally put medals on the wrong side of the jackets and offended the Returned Service Association. We were literally royally screwed and had to apologise profusely.)

The Queen’s sartorial style has been omnipresent throughout my career. There have been as many twinsets in KS collections as there are photos of the Queen wearing them. Again and again, I reference her hunting tweeds and equestrian tailoring. I love a tailored pleat or A-line skirt as much as the Queen but most of all, I think I understand and use colour as she always did. 

The Queen was fundamentally a shy woman thrust into the epicentre of global attention. I believe a huge part of her finding her strength was in her dressing the part. At their absolute best, clothes are our armour. When I have to do something scary I put on my armour. 

Currently, I have a bright green coat and blue trousers and when I put those two pieces on together I am invincible, I can conquer the universe. 

I know that she followed the same ritual. In her bedroom, in her undies, she was Lillibet, but by the time she’d buttoned that immaculate acid green or butter yellow coat, adjusted the perfect matchy hat to just the right jaunty angle, she could look in the mirror and see Queen Elizabeth II. And she was invincible. I will miss her.