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Do you want to live like a queen? This 'Crown' auction can help.

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Despite all the scandals and tragedies, the royal lifestyle in 'The Crown' looked enviably lavish.

For six seasons, Queen Elizabeth II rode through London in a golden carriage drawn by six horses. Princess Diana galloped and grunted across Europe in a succession of designer outfits. For special occasions, the royal members wore crowns and ermine robes.

For most viewers, watching the show, which ended in December, was the closest they got to the trappings of royal life.

Until now. Kind of.

Auction house Bonhams is scheduled for February 7 offering hundreds of items of “The Crown” in London, including intricate set pieces such as a full-size replica of the golden state coach (with an estimated price of up to 50,000 pounds, or $63,000), as well as more affordable props that gave 'The Crown' an air of authenticity. Those include two porcelain corgis which appeared on the Queen's desk ($380) and the Queen Mother's tray with drinks and champagne stir stick ($101).

Some items seem to be bargains – relatively speaking. One of Princess Diana's real dresses sold for more than $1 million last year, and her 'revenge dress' – the black evening gown she wore on the night Prince Charles admitted: on national television, to defraud her – once netted $74,000. The version of the revenge dress that Elizabeth Debicki wears in 'The Crown' has an estimated lot price of $10,000 to $15,000 in the Bonhams sale.

In interviews, three members of the show's costume and set department discussed some of the auction's key lots. Below are edited excerpts from the conversations.

MICHELE CLAPTON, Season 1 Costume Designer: The Queen's coronation was one of the big set pieces of Season 1, and it was so important to get it right. A lot of time was spent researching the outfits and then finding modern fabrics that were closest to the originals so that they moved and behaved in the same way.

The state robe, worn by Claire Foy, is red velvet and ermine, and of course we couldn't use ermine now, so we had to look for faux fur. I remember doing a lot of camera tests on pieces of fur, because sometimes what looked good to the naked eye looked terrible on camera.

We embroider by hand as much as possible. Sometimes, when we ran out of time, we machine embroidered or painted the fabric. For the cloak, we painted some of the gold because you wouldn't see that on TV. It was a very, very difficult outfit.

CLAPTON: For scenes like the coronation, which were so well documented, we recreated the outfits as best we could. But then we had the artistic freedom to create looks in the style of what the Queen was wearing at the time. This ball gown was the first design I made for Claire. I remember drawing it, trying to find a way in.

We wanted to show what a movie star Elizabeth was – this beauty and youth – and the beautiful blue complemented Claire's eyes so well. Elizabeth would have worn similar things, but when she became queen she immediately became more serious, and it showed in her clothes. Being frivolous and letting oneself be free: all that was suddenly given up.

AMY ROBERTS, costume designer seasons 3 to 6: For certain outfits we had to get permission from the original designer. Sometimes people said 'yes' and sometimes 'no'. With the “revenge dress'I think the legal department couldn't track down Christina Stambolian, the very smart Greek designer who created it, so our approach was to create our own version and give the public what they expected to see: this wonderfully sexy dress.

The dress Elizabeth Debicki wore said so much about Diana's strength, and that's what we were aiming for.

There were other times when we had to speak to the legal department. With tThe dress Kate Middleton wore to the university fashion showthe original designer didn't want this copied, and I remember sending photos of fittings to the lawyers for them to approve: “Yes, that's different enough”, or, “No, you need some more to change.”

ROBERTS: With the military uniforms, which was all about total accuracy. This was for Trooping the Colour, a ceremony that marks the monarch's official birthday. The medals, the ribbons: all those details had to be forensically accurate, otherwise it would be embarrassing and not kind to the people who served. We had a whole military department, led by Max Birkett, and I just came over and said, “Yes, great color, this is perfect!” So it was all on them.

All the queens were great to design for. There were few arguments. I always say my biggest fights were with Dominic West, who played Prince Charles. Every morning we would argue about which tie and pocket square combinations we would get. He'd say, “Oh, this is boring,” and I'd have to say, “No, it's great!”

ALISON HARVEY, set designer: The Queen (Imelda Staunton) inspects one model of her own funeral procession was the idea of ​​Stephen Daldry, the director of the last episode, so I bought all the lead soldiers I could find on auction sites and eBay until my entire desk was covered in them. Then Stephen said, “No, I want an exact copy of the Queen's funeral” and many of the regiments weren't available, so we had to make a lot of figures from scratch ourselves, scanning real people in costumes and then miniaturizing the outfits. , 3D printing our own models, hand painting. We even had to get our replica crown jewels in so we could make a little crown for the little coffin with a little flag.

It was about three months of work, in different phases.

HARVEY: We talked about using CGI for the golden coach, but then everyone decided they wanted to see it in real life, so there was about three months of discussion about how the heck we were going to do it. We went to the Royal Mews, in Buckingham Palace, to see and take photos of the real one, like all the other tourists, and then tried to make our own photos as authentic as possible. The Devil's Horsemen, the company that supplied our horses, had a chassis, and our model makers customized it, sculpting these amazing rococo-style palm leaves in clay, then casting and gilding them, and doing all the other decorations.

It was a mountain of work. I think it cost us £85,000 and about 25 people worked on it, using all these traditional skills. We even had to think about technology: how to get this thing moving. It was really wobbly!

HARVEY: With each set we looked at photos, videos, leafed through books the website of the Royal Collection – anything that could contain a bit of information about what the royal family was like, to give layers of credibility.

Obviously I don't know what the queen bed was, but we know that King George IV, who was king from 1820 to 1830, collected a lot of French furnitureso this antique, in the style of a bed from the time of Louis XVI, is a good bet.

We always tried to buy real antiques first, rather than making something from scratch. I spent a lot of time in auction houses, or buying stuff on the farm, trying to find the real deal.

HARVEY: If you look at the royal collection online you will see a lot of Georgian furniture, and these chairs are in the style of a classic armchair from that period. In the show, the Queen uses this when she receives Prime Ministers at weekly meetings. We got a great wood carver to make them from scratch, then we found a small sample of this gold fabric and a damask that we liked and sent it to a company in Italy, who dyed the fabric and wove the custom material in an 18th century mill. It seems like a lot of effort, but we were lucky to have a long lead time.

I have no idea who will buy them, but it's a nice set with a great provenance if you have a big enough sitting room. Every famous actor's butt has been on it.

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