Queen Elizabeth was known for her colourful style, but she reportedly hated one colour in particular. The late queen frequently wore bold monochromatic looks when making public appearances, preferring tweed and tartan when she was at Sandringham or Balmoral.

Jo Elvin, host of the Daily Mail's Palace Confidential, said: "She didn't sit around dreaming about outfits, not like her sister, desperate to get to Prada, but she understood the iconography of the Queen and what she had to wear exactly." The Queen's colourful wardrobe came into being when Angela Kelly became her dresser in 1994. The Mail's royal editor, Rebecca English, revealed that Elizabeth II had favourite colours and others that she didn't much like. Rebecca said: "I spoke to someone this week who'd dressed the queen for many years, and I said, 'Oh, did she have any favourite colours?' And they said to me, blue, pink, lilac."

The Queen reportedly didn't like one colour in particular, Rebecca said: "But she didn't massively like purple, because she thought it was a mourning colour. She did wear purple, but she preferred lilac; she was less keen on a strong purple."

While out of the spotlight, the Queen appeared to prefer more muted tones. Elvin explained: "During a walkabout, she once said, 'If I wore beige, no one would know who I was.'

"The plain colour made up just 1% of the Queen's wardrobe in 2012, but there was still a time and a place for beige, namely when the Queen wanted to go incognito in the grounds of Windsor, or Balmoral."

Royal fans have noticed that the Princess of Wales seems to be inspired by her husband's late grandmother, adopting a 'colour-drenching' approach to her clothing.

Fashion designer Amanda Wakeley OBE said: "The Princess of Wales is doing it even better, because she goes one step further and the shoes are the same colour as the coat or the dress and the hat. It's really eye-catching."

Wakeley said she loved that the Queen would do one colour for her hat, dress, and coat, but always paired them with black shoes and a black lounger bag. If it were raining, she'd have the Fulton see-through umbrella trimmed with the colour of the dress.