The Queen Consort with close friend Bruce Oldfield. Photo / Getty Images
The Queen has chosen her close friend Bruce Oldfield, who was also a favourite of Diana, Princess of Wales, to design her Coronation dress.
Camilla has been working on the creation in secret with Oldfield, who once claimed he had given the royal her “confidence”.
The design of the dress, which will be one of the most significant of the Queen’s life, will remain under wraps until she is crowned at Westminster Abbey on May 6.
Oldfield, 72, has long been one of the Royal family’s favoured couturiers.
He is synonymous with the late Diana, Princess of Wales, with whom he worked closely for 10 years, designing many of her most iconic gowns in the 1980s.
The designer said in 2014: “I gave Diana her glamour and Camilla her confidence”.
But a source added: “Camilla has a very close friendship with Bruce spanning many years, so in many ways it is the natural and obvious choice.
“Camilla trusts Bruce because he has really delivered on dresses for so many important occasions recently for her.”
Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation dress is regarded as one of the most important examples of 20th-century design.
She requested that the gown, made of white satin, conform to the line of her wedding dress.
Designer Norman Hartnell submitted eight designs and the late Queen asked him to merge specific details from two to create a ninth.
She also asked him to supplement the four UK national emblems with the emblems of all dominions of which she was monarch and suggested embroideries in various colours rather than just silver.
Hartnell also designed the dresses worn by all principal ladies in the immediate Royal family, including Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, as well as the cream satin gowns worn by the maids of honour, creating a “coherence of style” that offered a unified effect.
After the coronation, the late Queen wore the dress on six further occasions, including the Opening of Parliament in New Zealand and Australia in 1954.
The Queen has often opted for Oldfield’s evening coats and gowns on royal engagements.
She won plaudits for a pale turquoise gown with lace he made for her for a tour of Sri Lanka in 2013 and the gown she wore to the James Bond premiere No Time To Die two years ago.
The designer was born in London to an Irish mother and Jamaican father, a boxer.
However, he never met them and spent the first 13 years of his life with his foster mother, Violet, a County Durham seamstress who first piqued his interest in sewing.
He made dresses for his sisters’ Sindy dolls but became a “bad boy” and was placed in a Barnardo’s home after being deemed “uncontrollable”.
Oldfield, who overcame a debilitating stammer, attended Ripon Grammar School and became a teacher in Sheffield.
However, he said he had “no patience” and only stuck it out for three years before asking Barnado’s for a loan to help him get to art school, later taking a fashion course at Central Saint Martins, London.
He began making couture clothes in 1978 and opened his first shop in 1984.
He is said to have met the late Princess of Wales by chance and once described her as the “perfect client”.
He said: “When I look back, it was relentless for her. We did dress her up like she was going to a wedding every day”.
Oldfield’s relationship with Diana ended with her divorce from Prince Charles. He told the Sunday Telegraph in 2021: “When Diana quit royal duties she left us, too”.
He was awarded an OBE in 1990.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment.