Always fashionable but always royal

I remember walking along South Molton Street some years ago with a friend visiting from Los Angeles. I recognised the woman coming towards us. "There's Princess Margaret," I said, as she turned in at a small door and disappeared. My friend was totally thrown. "I cannot believe that sight," he said excitedly. "The Princess of Britain just walking by herself. Not even Liza Minnelli would go out without a bodyguard back home."

It seemed to sum up the wayward Princess, who so often kicked against protocol in both her private and public life. In fact, that morning I knew she was climbing the steep stairs to the atelier of the French couturier, Roger Brines, from whom she bought many clothes. Her choice of a minor, non-British designer in the Eighties and Nineties, in the face of government suggestions that she should buy British, was entirely characteristic of Princess Margaret and her approach to fashion.

In her teens, she was passionately interested in clothes, even though following the New Look, which had taken the world by storm overnight since Christian Dior launched it with his first collection in 1947, was not permitted her. Not only was it considered unwise, so soon after the Second World War, for a member of the Royal Family to dress in fashion inspired by a Frenchman, clothing in Britain was still rationed and the Royal Family, like everybody else, was only allowed a certain number of coupons. Clothes gobbled them up if they were elaborate or contained a lot of material. The anklesweeping, voluminous skirts of the New Look meant that coupons had to be rigorously saved by those who wanted it.

In common with most young women in the Fifties, Princess Margaret, and her sister, the Queen, followed the taste of their mother. Photographs of the time show them in ankle-strapped platform-soled shoes - to counteract the fact that they were all rather short in stature - tailored suits, still often called costumes by many women, and even swathed in fox stoles. Dowdy and middle-aged looking, they were in the true tradition of aristocratic women across the country.

Princess Margaret chafed against the restrictions and, encouraged by her aunt, the Greek-born Princess Marina - the only internationally chic member of the Royal Family - she steeped herself in Vogue and dreamed of visiting the couture houses of Paris. In particular, she wanted to see the establishment of Christian Dior. Being a woman of great determination and thoroughly indulged by her parents, she got her own way and visited her hero in his establishment on Avenue Montaigne.

The event was meant to be secret, as it was a private visit, but the news leaked out and the British papers went mad with delight. Some approved of a fashion-conscious, independently spirited young Royal. Others treated her trip as tantamount to treason. The reaction was a foretaste of how the Press would react to Princess Margaret for the rest of her life, but the fuss was disarmed by her youth and charm. When she posed for Cecil Beaton to celebrate her 21st birthday in 1951 wearing a Christian Dior evening dress, she looked so totally the fairytale Princess that even editors of Left-wing newspapers hadn't the heart to carp.

This pinpoints an ambivalence which dogged Princess Margaret's steps until her marriage to Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960. For that occasion, she did buy British, having Norman Hartnell design her wedding dress. Marriage opened up a new world for Margaret. Her husband was a highly successful fashion photographer, and her life with him moved her away from the stuffy upper-class and county world to the racy lifestyle associated with fashion and showbiz. There was a lot less of the country-house weekend and considerably more of the staying out late, partying with the likes of Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland.

Princess Margaret fitted into this world effortlessly. Known for her sharp satiric tongue, she could hold her own with most of London's wits. Although small, she was very beautiful, her generous lips and large eyes giving her the appearance of a model. But what she had that really made her unique was style. The way she used her cigarette holder - and held her drink - made Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's look gauche. She had the poise and confidence that convinced everyone she met of her sophistication.

In fairness, she learned a lot about appearance from her husband and his fashion associates, but she also brought her own unique quality to the way she dressed, whether in simple clothes for going around London, grand ball gowns for formal Palace occasions or totally informally on her beloved Caribbean island, Mustique. But whether wearing a formal suit and a picture hat at an official function or swathed in nothing more than a parèe, Princess Margaret never forgot - or allowed anyone else to forget - that she was royal. Her fashion achievement was to break away from stuffy protocol and dress entirely as she wished without ever undermining her royal credentials. Popular as she was, this Princess was never a popularist, and she cleverly used her clothes to proclaim to friends and the anonymous crowds that she was not just a fashion icon but a royal fashion icon.

The Party Princess