Margaret Thatcher changed the face of British politics, but here the team behind her makeover talk about how she was changed, too.
The scene is a telling one. Two men in grey suits confidently promise an ambitious politician that they can “make you look like the leader that you can be”. But, they insist, what is required is nothing less than a complete image makeover. The first thing to go, they state disparagingly, is “that hat”, then “the pearls”, but most importantly “the voice” must change. “It’s too high and has no authority.”
The camera then switches perspective and locks on to the face of none other than Margaret Thatcher. “I may be persuaded to surrender the hat,” she declares. “The pearls, however, are non-negotiable.”
The significance of the scene, taken from The Iron Lady, the biopic of Margaret Thatcher that opened on Friday, is clear. While Mrs Thatcher, portrayed by Meryl Streep with uncanny accuracy, may have been open to advice on how best to present herself to the public, ultimately she was the one in charge.
But what is the truth about the makeover of the Grantham grocer’s daughter into one of the most influential politicians of the modern era? Indeed, Mrs Thatcher’s transformation was arguably the first of what would become the practice of tailoring a politician’s image to fit the media age, something later perfected by Tony Blair and David Cameron.
“She was the first one who had to make an effort to change the way she looked,” says Dr Daniel Conway, a lecturer in politics at Loughborough University who has written a paper on the political significance of Mrs Thatcher’s clothing. “She was lower-middle-class and from the provinces – and this could have been used as a symbol of her unsuitability.”
The on-screen adviser telling Streep’s Thatcher to get rid of the hat and pearls is Gordon Reece. A former television producer, he has been widely credited with masterminding Mrs Thatcher’s real-life change of image.
It was Reece – a flamboyant figure who reputedly lived solely on champagne and cigars – who advised Mrs Thatcher to adopt a softer hairstyle, get rid of her “fussy” clothes and stick to a high neckline and pastel shades. Crucially, he also advised her to lower the tone of her voice and speak more slowly and closer to the microphone to make her voice husky, intimate and, above all, less hectoring.
Reece came into his own after Mrs Thatcher became leader of the opposition in 1975. He had previously coached her for television appearances, getting her for the first time to relax in front of the cameras. In 1978 he became director of publicity at Conservative Central Office. With his help, Mrs Thatcher, an Oxford-educated career woman, presented herself, first of all, as a distinctly non-feminist housewife. Before the leadership election, Reece staged the now-famous picture of her doing the family washing-up. He started picking her television appearances with greater care, avoiding programmes such as Panorama, where her politics ran the risk of coming under close scrutiny, in favour of friendlier platforms such as Jimmy Young’s Radio 2 show.
But it was with Mrs Thatcher’s tone and appearance that the influence of Reece – who died in 2001 – proved pivotal. Out went the fussy bows, garden-fête hats and chunky jewellery; in came simpler, bolder outfits and a softer, deeper tone designed to make her voice sound less shrill and strident.
Elocution lessons rendered the exaggerated, upper-class accent she had acquired as a young woman into more ordinary speech, though opponents regarded her new voice as both nannying and condescending. As well as hiring a voice coach from the National Theatre to teach her to breathe correctly and speak more slowly, Reece sent her off to see Laurence Olivier, who taught her the importance of projecting her own personality in a speech rather than parroting someone else’s script.
The advertising guru Lord Bell, who at Saatchi and Saatchi headed up the Conservative Party’s 1978 campaign, was also instrumental in Mrs Thatcher’s makeover, and he now confesses there was another, simpler, weapon in Mrs Thatcher’s armoury. Warm water with lemon and honey. “Because she did so much talking, her vocal chords got stressed and it made her sound shrill,” he says. “We found that if she drank some hot water with lemon and honey it lowered her pitch and took the strain out of her voice.”
However, Mrs Thatcher always kept a firm grip on the project of refashioning her image. Those “suburban” pearls were indeed non-negotiable. “I don’t know why the bloody hell I shouldn’t wear these pearls,” she told friends one evening. “They were a present from Denis.”
Even before Reece came on to the scene there was Dame Guinevere Tilney, a close friend of Mrs Thatcher and a constant source of steady common-sense advice on presentation. Dame Tilney, who was married to John Tilney, the former Conservative MP for Liverpool Wavertree, became Mrs Thatcher’s wardrobe mistress and is credited with refining the simple, elegant style adopted by her as leader of the opposition and then PM.
“Dame Tilney advised Margaret to wear something elegant and functional,” says Lord Bell. “Margaret knew and trusted Dame Tilney, and she knew that because she was a woman her appearance would be judged and commented on in a way Harold Wilson’s or James Callaghan’s wouldn’t be.”
Mrs Thatcher had always had an eye for an outfit. She was, after all, the daughter of a seamstress and knew the value of dressing the part.
But pivotal in establishing what came to be known as the Thatcher look was Margaret King, the former director of Aquascutum. Mrs King began working with the prime minister as her dress adviser shortly before her historic trip to Moscow in 1987 to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, the reforming Soviet leader.
“She wanted the British to be proud of her and wanted to wear everything British,” says Mrs King, who became friends with Mrs Thatcher. “Part of the wardrobe was a big fox-fur hat, which got a tremendous reception. She called me within two hours of returning to London to say the clothes were sensational.
“She was in a man’s world and she had to look the part. She couldn’t dress in a frivolous manner. I got her into suits and away from the pussy-bow dresses. Suits always photograph well and even out imperfections – not that she had many. She had wonderful legs, for instance. She stood beautifully, and presented herself well.”
Mrs King also intervened to minimise the number of occasions during which Mrs Thatcher was seen carrying a handbag, an accessory that had fast become visual shorthand for the dressing downs she regularly dished out to more recalcitrant members of her Cabinet.
“When the press started presenting an image of her 'handbagging’ her opponents, I persuaded her to drop the handbag for a clutch bag. Not that it mattered – the image was already in everyone’s mind.”
Also playing a central role was Cynthia Crawford, who began working as a personal assistant for Mrs Thatcher in 1978, the year before she marched triumphantly into Downing Street for the first time.
Mrs Thatcher was sensitive to letters pointing out she had worn the same outfit on subsequent occasions, so Mrs Crawford was instructed to keep detailed files on what she wore, when she wore it and what it looked like on television. These outfits were then carefully listed on an index-card system.
During the 1980s Mrs Thatcher became synonymous with the power-dressing look. This was no accident. “She was power,” as Mrs Crawford told Dr Conway .
Mrs Thatcher’s legendary hairstyle was the work of a set of Carmen thermal rollers that she took with her everywhere. But although the style itself remained relatively unchanged from the late Sixties onwards, it was felt her platinum blonde colouring was too brash and strident for a leader of the opposition and aspiring prime minister.
As a result she visited the Mayfair salon of Leonard Lewis, where Daniel Galvin coloured her hair to a more subtle blonde.
“She was being groomed in every sense to get her ready to become prime minister,” says Mr Galvin. “The three of us – Margaret Thatcher, her PR and myself – discussed what was needed. I had to tone the colour down a fraction so it was less harsh, but not so much that it would come as a shock to everyone.
“She understood it needed to be done as she couldn’t walk around looking like Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield if she wanted to be PM. She was extremely professional about it.”
Among the walk-on parts in Mrs Thatcher’s transformation was that of a little known make-up assistant from Granada TV. Mrs Thatcher took to the girl while being prepared for a particular television appearance and subsequently hired her to do her make-up for all public occasions.
However, Lord Bell believes that what made Mrs Thatcher truly powerful was her innate charisma. “She would rehearse speeches with Gordon and myself and a couple of advisers. But all we ever said was be yourself, authenticity is what matters. In the end what counted about Margaret was not her image but what she did.”
For her part, Baroness Thatcher was happy to acknowledge the part Gordon Reece and the people who worked with him played in making her more accessible – and even palatable – to newspapers and television, and ultimately to the voters.
In her autobiography, The Path to Power, she wrote: “Gordon was a godsend. An ebullient former TV producer whose good humour never failed, he was able to jolly me along to accept things I would have rejected from other people.
“Every politician has to decide how much he or she is prepared to change manner and appearance for the sake of the media. It may sound grittily honourable to refuse to make any concessions, but such an attitude in a public figure is most likely to betray a lack of seriousness about winning power.”
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