Elizabeth Emanuel tells PEOPLE, “You can see the twinkle, and it radiates. The dress isn’t as complete without the veil”
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Princess Diana’s wedding dress will now radiate with some extra “twinkle” when it is shown again.
Forty-five years after Diana wed the future King Charles on July 29, 1981, in her spectacular gown, her dress designer has recreated the missing veil.
Whenever the iconic dress has been shown since Diana’s death at age 36 in 1997, it has been without the equally magnificent veil. Like the dress, with its famous 25-foot train, the original veil traveled a lengthy 40 feet from Diana’s head and was topped off with her Spencer family tiara.
“It needs that veil. That’s the whole magic. That’s why I call it the Veil of Light,” Emanuel tells PEOPLE of her remake. “You can see the twinkle, and it radiates. The dress isn’t as complete without the veil.”
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The original dress has been displayed periodically in the last three decades, at Diana’s family home Althorp House and at Kensington Palace. However, it never has the veil along with it. Emanuel believes it has either been lost or, more likely, damaged.
The designer — who teamed up with her then-husband David in 1981 and their small team of seamstresses and embroiderers to make the dress in her tiny studio in the Mayfair area of London — was commissioned to oversee the remaking of the veil by Renae Plant of The Princess Diana Museum.
Plant, who is taking the collection on the road for its first-ever tour starting in the fall, tells PEOPLE, “Working with Elizabeth Emanuel to preserve these pieces of history in The Princess Diana Museum is incredibly important to me. She carries firsthand knowledge of how they were imagined, made and experienced, and there is something very special about being able to record and recreate that history with her now.”
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Plant adds that the veil is not just a “simply beautiful object.”
“They are part of a living archive, and I feel a real responsibility to preserve Elizabeth’s memories, craftsmanship and creative voice for future generations while we have the opportunity to do so,” she says.
The recreated veil is still in London and could adorn the dress should it be exhibited in the future.
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Emanuel turned to the original makers of the veil, Hand & Lock in London, for the recreation. Just as they did 45 years ago, they worked by hand, sewing countless mini sequins that are scattered across the veil’s fabric.
Emanuel marvels at the intricate detailing and skills required, telling PEOPLE, “I don’t know how they did it without ruining their eyesight.”
“I wanted to make it the exact same dimensions, so I tracked down the actual measurements, and we kept as close as possible to the specification as we could,” Emanuel adds.
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“At Hand & Lock, they went back to their records, and I took them an original piece of the fabric and a piece from the same loom to help them,” she explains.
“They did such an amazing job because it was bigger than the room they made it in, and they had to make it in stages,” she also shares.
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Emanuel says the veil “defuses the color, and it makes the dress look lighter, and it has this airy, delicate feel to it which you don’t necessarily appreciate when you see the dress without all of that. It is an integral part of the design. That’s how I saw it looking when I designed it.”
Emanuel adds, “I have yet to see it over the actual dress. If they ever do use it in an exhibition, I would be so happy. It would be amazing. To see it as close as possible as it looked on the day is really important.”
