With Nicole Kidman soon to be starring as Grace Kelly, Naomi Watts playing Princess Diana and Kate Middleton's wardrobe selling out, there's never been a better time to be a princess.

Grace Kelly was not the first Hollywood star turned princess (Rita Hayworth got there a few years before with a marriage to Prince Aly Khan) but she was the epitome of European royalty, using her celebrity as a movie star to reinvigorate Monaco as playground of the rich.

She had the how-to-dress-as-a-princess template down to a tee, favouring a wardrobe of classic pieces, from her signature Hermés Kelly bag and white gloves, to a period in the 1960s for turbans and colourful Mark Bohan for Dior chiffon gowns in the 70s. She almost outshone Jackie Kennedy at the White House in 1961, in a vivid green wool Givenchy shift dress and jacket and white turban.

Grace also created one of the first maternity trends, long before celebs made a career from showing off their baby bumps,  when she used her oversized Hermés bag to shield her pregnancy from a photographer in 1958. This padlock, satchel style bag was immediately re-named the Kelly bag, and became a waiting list favourite.

Grace Kelly's 1956 wedding to Prince Rainer III of Monaco was a merger of royalty and Hollywood, with the MGM costume department not only providing the bridesmaids dresses and civil wedding suit, but the head designer, Helen Rose, creating Grace Kelly's wedding dress. Fifty five years later it was the inspiration for Kate Middleton's Sarah Burton designed dress, with its long sleeves, high neck line and lace.

As a glamorous Hollywood star in the 1950s, such was her influence that fashion magazines of the time celebrated the Grace Kelly look - an all-American wholesomeness, with classic, clean lines befitting a Philadelphia mainliner turned Hollywood star.

Grace Kelly was Hitchcock's favourite blonde. He saw her as a "snow-covered volcano," an unobtainable object of desire and the perfect subject for his voyeurism. Through obsessive attention to detail, he helped shape her into the elegant, remote, fantasy figure with fire just below the surface.

In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart complains that she is just too perfect, too talented, too sophisticated. In one scene she appears in the doorway dressed in a flimsy negligee, offering him, incapacitated in a wheelchair with a broken leg, a "preview of coming attractions."

As a wealthy heiress in To Catch a Thief, she was dressed in glacial, Grecian-inspired gowns which not only worked to showcase the jewels around her neck, but gave her a cold, aloof appearance, making it all the more surprising as she kisses Cary Grant with fireworks exploding in the background.

This ladylike elegance covered up for the way she conducted herself in private.

Before she was married, Grace was known as a bit of a man-eater, embarking on affairs with her often married co-stars, "and all the time wearing those white gloves," as one of her acquaintances commented. 

Her look was simple - those famous white gloves which were her signature, a smart handbag, full skirts in the Dior New Look style, blouses and smart suits, like the mint green suit worn in Rear Window, hair swept back, minimal make-up and pearl earrings as accessories.  

Grace wanted to be taken seriously, rather than just be seen as another pretty starlet, and so was always well groomed without showing too much flesh. She made casual clothes glamorous - the safari suit, shirtdresses, jeans, loafers and white shirts, but she wore them in a way that reeked of class.

When asked by a journalist what she wore to bed, instead of giving the Marilyn Monroe answer, she said: "I think it's nobody's business what I wear to bed. A person has to keep something to herself or your life is just a layout in a magazine".

Costume designer Edith Head, who struck up a friendship with Kelly after dressing her on several films, said: "Off screen she was not the best-dressed actress in Hollywood, but she was always very fastidious about the way she looked. She wore white gloves and very sheer hose, and always carried a hankie."

It was Edith Head who designed one of her favourite gowns, the ice-blue satin dress worn to collect her Oscar for The Country Girl in 1954. It's simple, glacial, elegant, and has become the classic Oscars dress, still evoked on the red carpet by Gwyneth Paltrow, Uma Thurman, Anne Hathaway.

Get the look

A headscarf

The headscarf is a perfect item for cruising along the Cote D'Azur. Wear with a pair of sunglasses for more star chic.

White gloves

Grace Kelly was famed for her white gloves, which were ladylike, elegant and quite unusual for a Hollywood actress in the 1950s. She got pretty excited about shopping for gloves - Edith Head recounted a trip to Hermes in Paris where they were "like two girls in an ice-cream shop".

A classic tailored coat

Pale pink, a trend for autumn, is the perfect shade for a Grace Kelly style coat.

Pearl drop earrings

Grace chose elegance over fussiness, favouring a pair of pearl drop earrings. She would also keep make-up minimal, and hair simply swept back.

A plain shirt

Grace favoured classic styles, and would wear a simple shirt or blouse, worn with a pencil skirt or pair of trousers for her down time.

A long, Grecian style gown

The classic Grace Kelly gown is Grecian goddess style, flowing, sometimes strapless and always simple and elegant. See the two pale chiffon gowns she wears in To Catch a Thief, or the gown she wears by the pool in High Society.

A statement handbag

It has to be the Hermes Kelly bag, but with a price tag of over £6000, try a dark leather satchel from the High Street.