Princess Diana's Favorite Swimwear Brand Recreated Her Iconic Swimsuits For 'The Crown'

If you aren't all caught up on The Crown, proceed with caution, light spoilers ahead.

Over the course of The Crown's five seasons, the costume department has managed to perfectly replicate iconic looks worn by the royal family through the years. There was Queen Elizabeth's coronation gown in season 1; the blue ruffled chiffon ball gown she wore when the Kennedy's were in town for season 2; her fur-trimmed orange coat for the Aberfan disaster in season 3; Princess Diana's dramatic wedding dress train in season 4; her legendary revenge dress in season 5; and now the first half of season 6 is all about the late Princess of Wales's swimsuits.

During the first three episodes, Elizabeth Debicki's Diana is seen wearing a number of different bathing suits while vacationing on Mohamed Al Fayed's superyacht in St. Tropez. A neon lime and purple one-piece with a matching sarong, a leopard-print one-piece, and black and white one-piece are among the memorable styles, which Princess Diana was famously photographed wearing in the weeks leading up to her death, that were recreated for the show. And when it came down to the design process, costume designers Amy Roberts and Sidonie Roberts actually reached out to the brand behind the original swimwear, Gottex, for help.

"We thought why don't we just go to them and see," Sidonie told Town & Country. "They were brilliant and made them for us. We had fittings so that Elizabeth felt comfortable as well. That was three of them sorted in a way in terms of that mission."

But due to restrictions, some of the other swimsuits shown in the series had to be made from scratch. In the scene where Diana kisses Dodi, she is wearing a patterned neon bathing suit similar to the one she wore in real life.

"We weren't allowed to use [the original], so we made our version of that," Sidonie told the publication. "When that comes up, when we're not allowed to recreate something so closely, Amy does this thing where she's like, 'Close your eyes. What do you remember of that? What do you remember of that scene?' She did it with the wedding dress [in season 4], and with this swimsuit. It's just this essence of what do you take away from that, what color was it, and what feel was it? It was a very '90s print, so we just went about recreating it that way so that we had a sense of the real thing."

In another scene, Diana is wearing a blue and white floral-printed swimsuit with a matching sarong while dropping ice cubes on Dodi and Prince William from an upper level of the yacht—a moment that actually happened in real life, according Sidonie!

"Alex Gabassi, who directed that, had seen this photograph of Diana dropping ice on Dodi and William at the bottom and he thought I love that, but what context was that?" said Sidonie. "He was very good in episode 1, bringing out the playful element of Diana and wanting to bring that out in William, who was quite reluctant at the beginning. So we used our own [swimsuit] for that, which was a Japanese '90s print that was on silk originally. We loved it and had it printed onto swimwear and then we used the original silk as the sarong."

Sidonie and Amy also had to make a reimagined version of the iconic turquoise swimsuit Princess Diana wore while sitting on the yacht's diving board (which actually happens to be a passerelle!). "It was relatively simple in that it was what it was," Sidonie said of designing the look. "It was the first swimsuit we did with Elizabeth, so the question with us with her was what does she feel comfortable in? Because '90s to 2000s swimwear is pretty high on the thigh."

"[It] was getting a balance between the actual shape and also what Elizabeth as an actress would feel comfortable, being quite exposed, in this scene," she continued. "In terms of color, we just went similarly as the other one because it is a moment in itself and we wanted to keep that iconic moment as it was."

This isn't the first time the costume department teamed up with Princess Diana's go-to brands. For season 5, Amy and Sidonie worked with The British Lung Foundation and Virgin Atlantic for the famous crewnecks Diana was photographed wearing, as well as Harvard University for the cowl-neck sweater she often wore while dodging paparazzi.

The first four episodes of season 6 of The Crown is available to stream on Netflix now. The final part is set to hit the streaming service on Thursday, December 14.

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