Margaret Thatcher: How I created a Prime Minister's wardrobe

My Style is all

by Diana Hutchinson Woman's Editor

There was a bouquet of flowers waiting for her in the hall. When I say bouquet … it was more a four-foot-wide Dutch Master painting of out of season lilies, curving parrot tulips and a new parchment-cream rose. It was personally addressed to the Prime Minister, The Rt. Hon. Margaret Thatcher …   .

The man on the door who has charge of the late 18th-Century mahogany grandfather clock didn't remember any such bouquet arriving for any former P.M. But then they were all men.

Upstairs in the beige gold sitting room overlooking Horse Guards, a TV crew had set up harsh lights. The programme editor was beating a tattoo in her steel tip stilettos on the pale oak floor.

Two rooms away the far more hirsute, crew from the BBC World Service was plugging in equipment for what, in its way, was an historic occasion … a Prime Minister taking time to promote fashion and style.

Britain more than most has uniforms for every occasion. Design an advert showing a bank manager, a messenger boy, or a super secretary and there are specific clothes you would choose.

But there is no uniform for a lady Prime Minister. Whereas most women going to some special occasion have a point of reference, a comparison for what to wear, when … the rules of what the nation's first lady executive wears are still being written.

It has been London Fashion Week and the biggest test of all. For just by promoting it at a special party, the Prime Minister has encouraged prestigious foreign fashion writers to come to see the shows.

‘More than 300,000 people work in our fashion industry,’ Mrs Thatcher says. ‘It is very important for employment. Government should be seen to promote it. But perhaps because of the fact we are British we seem worried about being involved with something that seems like frippery.’

Yet already the multi-million pound British fashion industry has won world success. Princess Diana with her utterly feminine style has given it one kind of boost. The Prime Minister, travelling abroad with a totally different image, has given it another.

She appears out of her private study and [end p1] addresses the camera crew. ‘Who is going help me with my make-up?’ On a TV programme in Holland, she tells them, the lighting was so bright everyone thought she looked ill. It takes 15 minutes to apply the rosy pink and blue that will defeat the lights. Anne Diamond is already sitting on the brocade stiff back settle with far heavier make up at 28 than Maggie Thatcher at 58.

Mrs. Thatcher has learned the hard way. People criticise a woman's clothes and complexion as they would never do with a man. And at the beginning, she got some things wrong.

But she is still nervous. On Saturday when she hosted the Downing Street party she chose not to compete. ‘Plain black’ she says. ‘I always wear black when in doubt. I don't have a great choice of early evening party clothes.’ She is usually otherwise engaged.

In her private sitting room later she tells me: ‘When I first became Prime Minister I couldn't say I was really frightened about what to wear because, in a way I had been “on camera” quite a lot before. I knew I needed a lot of clothes because there could never be a day when you could wear something very old and not very nice. That would be the day someone important came to see you.’

She realised how much she was photographed, analysed and criticised just because she was a woman—I began to see and read articles about myself and tried to look at myself much more critically and to learn what suited and what didn't. I had some nice classic clothes, but there were others that were just not suitable. When you go shopping you cannot always find what you want; you have to settle for what is available.

‘I began to consider the long term. There weren't so many things for what I call the executive woman. There are far, far more now … Jaeger, Austin Reed, Aquascutum, Mansfield. … If you look around, clothes are much more colour co-ordinated and that matters tremendously I can buy a whole set in black for winter and summer, black coat, black suit, black dresses so when I go away I can take a set to another country with a set of accessories. Then, maybe, a grey set of clothes with the same accessories and possibly another set based on navy.

‘I prefer the chiselled very plain, very well tailored clothes that go on from year to year. Some of my favourites are about three years old, some even older, but I add to the classics every year. I buy some new dresses that are obviously not so classic and get some variety from them. It's a business woman look which is reasonably nice, comfortable, appropriate and lasting. I hope people look to me to be feminine, tailored, and occasionally elegant if not glamorous.’

The fashion business loves her because she conspicuously wears British especially when abroad. “The first impression another country has of you is when you walk down the steps of an airplane. When you arrive there may well be a guard of honour of smart beautifully tailored and turned out men. Odious competition unless you are very well groomed.

‘You are representing your country so you have to look right. I have learned things, such as a beautiful two-tone check fabric can look very good sitting close together as we are, but photographed from the distance it merges into a rather faded pastel.

‘I rarely wear red although I love the colour and it suits me being blonde. A long time ago, I was invited to a dinner. I borrowed a rather lovely evening gown, it was more lovely than anything. I possessed. It belonged to a very elegant friend and was a darkish crimson red in dull-surface satin. I felt like a million dollars.’

That was until the organisers presented her with a bouquet of true blue flowers. ‘They had been white carnations and they had carefully dyed each one because they were sure I would turn up wearing blue.’ It was a horrible clash and Mrs. Thatcher has tended to wear only blue and black on official bouquet-type evenings ever since.

‘But I break out occasionally into colour. Usually in hotter climates when you need to wear bright colours. I have a red chiffon dress I like particularly and a short fuchsia pink one. For non-political occasions.’

But whatever it is, unlike Princess Diana or the Queen Mother, she never wears anything frilly. ‘Always a good sharp outline. You eventually come round to your own style and it has to be what suits you. I am very long-waisted and it is not always possible to find clothes to fit. I've learned never to wear anything gathered at the waist. I could get into a size 12 since I have lost weight but a 14 is more comfortable.’

Her teeth are cosmetically impeccable, her hair a uniformly delicate shade of ash and worn much fuller since she gave up Tory Lady hats, and her weight, she says is now down to what it used to be years ago.

‘I'm probably about right now. I was too heavy for the camera and I just decided to eat less and cut out fat. I didn't find any energy loss. But I never want to go too thin. You always want a bit in reserve—especially in a job as tough as mine.’

She has been criticised for her three-inch heels and today she was wearing a Channel style two-tone court shoe in greys with a stiletto heel. ‘Look’, she said. ‘These are the heels I feel most comfortable in. I have worn this particular last for a long time. I merely send out for another pair because I know they will fit. And in any case, they are not really three-inches, they just look that high because they are so narrow.’

She has also learned it's not just the clothes you choose—she looked a little stony when the TV girl asked if she went window shopping. ‘Only from the window of the car. People kindly send in’—but the way you wear them.

She has next to no leisure clothes. If I called round at her home, off duty, she said, I would never find her in a scruffy old cardigan and slacks. ‘I have never, never liked slacks except for going up ladders and down submarines. You'd find me wearing a skirt and blouse, old pensioned off clothes from my job. Or perhaps a knitted suit like you're wearing now … Very nice,’ she added quickly. End of interview. Box inset

The Prime Minister has been criticised for her ‘Home Counties’ look—two rows of pearls. When I suggested this, she puffed a bit, then took them off. ‘Now look how dull and grey it is without them,’ she said.

‘Pearls are marvellous, they give your face life. It's a trick, but a good one. Look at pictures of Coco Chanel—she was never without pearls.’

Mrs. Thatcher says hers are plain old cultured and quite ordinary.