Diana’s Wedding Dress Designer Says He Can’t ‘Pronounce’ Meghan Markle’s Name

The designer of Princess Diana’s wedding dress has delivered a scathing critique of Meghan Markle and her Platinum Jubilee dress choice to a British newspaper columnist.

David Emanuel, half of the designer duo who created Diana’s wedding dress as well as many examples of her 1980s fashions, are quoted as calling Meghan “the American woman”, after saying he couldn’t “saying her name” and suggesting she was “channeling” Wallis Simpson for the jubilee, in a recently published conversation with the Daily mailIt’s Richard Eden.

Emanuel, a TLC host Say yes to dress UKpreviously commented that he was “disappointed” with Meghan’s choice of wedding dress and did not disguise his dislike of the Duchess in his conversation with Eden.

Asked about Meghan, he reportedly said: “You mean the American woman? I can’t pronounce the name now.”

Of her choice of a pale-coloured Christian Dior Haute Couture coat-dress, inspired by a traditional trench coat Meghan chose to wear for the National Thanksgiving Service Jubilee, Emanuel said:

“I tell you who she’s channeling – Wally Simpson”, this being a reference to Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee for whom Queen Edward VIII’s uncle abdicated the throne in 1936.

“I’m going to put my neck here,” he continued, “but she looked like she was wearing a nurse’s uniform.”

The designer then wondered if Meghan and Harry should have been invited to the Jubilee service in the first place.

“And why were they there?” he is quoted as saying.

“I can understand Her Majesty wanting her grandson, of course, but they are not royals.”

Many royals were present at the service at St Paul’s Cathedral held on the second day of the Jubilee weekend, including a large number of out-of-work royals such as the daughters of the Prince Andrew, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

Their attendance at the service marked Harry and Meghan’s first joint public appearance in the UK since stepping down as full-time working royals in March 2020. It also marked Meghan’s first public visit to Britain. Britain since her historic 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey aired. .

Despite low popularity in polls with the British public, Harry and Meghan were greeted with cheers from royal watchers who gathered outside the cathedral on the day of the service, although boos were also reported.

A regular commentator on royal events since the 1990s, Emanuel has become a vocal critic of Meghan and Harry and having known Princess Diana during the early years of her royal life, told Eden she would not have tolerated her two sons are apparently arguing.

“If Diana was alive,” he said of the princess who died in a Paris car crash in 1997 aged 36, “it would all have been settled.”

At the time of the Jubilee, a public appearance where Harry and Prince William and their wives Meghan and Kate Middleton were widely expected. However, after the thanksgiving service this seemed unlikely as the couples arrived separately, were seated separately and left at regular intervals.

The designer is then quoted as ending with a final critique of Meghan, this time about her professional credentials:

“They say she’s a movie star, but she’s not,” he said.

“She’s a B-list actress, that’s all. She’s not Glenn Close.”

Emanuel began designing for Diana, alongside his wife Elizabeth Emanuel, after her engagement to Prince Charles was announced in 1981 and created a black taffeta evening dress for her which was worn for her first royal function as the future Princess of Wales.

The dress caused a stir in the press as it broke many royal conventions. First, it was black, a color usually reserved for mourning in royal circles, and second, it was daringly low-cut. The design helped establish Diana’s reputation as a style icon and started a stream of sensationalist reporting around her fashion that would last until the end of her life and beyond.

In 1997, weeks before her untimely death, Diana auctioned off a collection of her most famous dresses. These included two Emanuel dresses, but not the black taffeta or her wedding dress, whose sentimental and historical significance she would have deliberately retained.

Newsweek has contacted representatives for Meghan Markle, David Emanuel and Richard Eden for comment.