A few years ago, when I interviewed Carole Middleton for The Telegraph, the Princess of Wales’s mother asked me whether I thought fashion was important. Her tone suggested she, personally, had her doubts, which is interesting because all the women from the Middleton family are always so well turned- out.
Perhaps Carole was making a distinction between fashion and clothes. Her eldest daughter might be similarly sceptical when it comes to fashion, but she is by no means immune to it. Arguably, she has at various times set it, particularly with that brand of demure elegance she has honed over the years, and which reached Peak Kate at this year’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations and Elizabeth II’s funeral.
2022 gave us plenty of Peak Kate, taking in everything from a new minimalism on the red carpet (we’ve seen her do twinkly fairy-tale dressing at galas for years, but the Roland Mouret off-the-shoulder monochrome dress and sleek hair she wore to the Top Gun: Maverick premier showed a bolder and more sophisticated side) to a penchant for business-like trouser suits.
Nothing is left to chance. Between the Princess and her sometime stylist Natasha Archer, they’ve ironed out just about all the kinks. It must take superhuman reserves of self-discipline not to crease or mark the many pastel crepe wool and silk dresses she wore this year. But if anyone can be relied on to look as pristine at the end of a day as at the start, it’s her. That might seem almost obsessively restrained in a commoner. But for someone as relentlessly in the public eye as Kate, perhaps perfection can be reassuring.
Her make-up, in common with other Royal women, may have got heavier, particularly at the funeral, but it’s softer too – fewer harsh black lines around the eyes and more blended powders and shading. This year too saw a new, less-is-more approach to her hair. If the outfit is minimalist, the hair is straight and smooth. If there’s a tiara, it’s invariably swept back in a low chignon. For family set pieces, it’s bouncy and big – the follicular equivalent of a giant grin.
Nothing can out-beam the Princess’s chief weapon however – that megawatt smile. Whether she’s attending the dullest of royal duties, rebutting varied recollections about the coldness of the Royal family or being fondled by Tom Cruise at the aforementioned Top Gun do, the Kate smile reliably puts in a convincing pleased-to-be-here appearance. If they could plug her smile into the national grid we wouldn’t have an energy crisis.
Who knows what’s going on beneath those still, glossy waters, although she appears to be blessed with a natural inner calm and stoicism, unlike the tabloids, which practically had to be revived with smelling salts at what they sold as Cruise’s off-with-his-head breach of etiquette.
There have been plenty of moments during the past 12 months when the smile could have slipped. But in public at least, while the strain is visible sometimes, in essence Kate’s “game face” never wavers. Maybe it’s all those team sports she played at school. But the Princess of Wales possesses the one quality that, according to Tina Brown, any woman marrying into the Firm needs above all else – including brains, beauty and pedigree – if she is to survive and thrive.
We’re talking about resilience, a singular quality that is neither brittle nor strident. It’s a quiet kind of strength, shot through with good humour. In Kate’s case it’s also liberally doused with a sheeny allure. She’s not one to wear her troubles on her Jenny Packham (a designer she wore several times this year) sleeve.
She knows what designers and silhouettes she can count on. These days her go-tos are Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, Emilia Wickstead or Catherine Walker; coat dresses, a long held favourite, were in abundance this year, but so, increasingly are trousers and touser suits, two looks she never used to wear for formal occasions, but which make her seem more contemporary and relatable.
She may not have a voice in the way that Meghan wanted one, but she knows how to narrate a story through clothes – witness the matching claret outfits at the Princess’s carol concert and the Boston tour trouser suits. Message received loud and clear: this is a united family and the Princess of Wales is a serious figure on the world stage, not just a princess.
Unlike the hoo-ha when Princess Diana declared she no longer wanted to be viewed merely as a fashion plate in the early 1990s, there have never been declarations one way or another from Kate. She just gets on with it. It’s show, not tell. Seventy years on from his grandmother’s coronation, William somehow found a wife who combined the jolly hockey sticks no nonsense of his Aunt Anne with the glamour of the young Queen Elizabeth ll.
While she lacks the can’t-look-away-weirdness of the car-crash Sussexes, Kate is interesting in her own way. As someone who’s so often the focus of everyone’s attention she genuinely doesn’t seem to crave attention. That’s unusual.
It’s hard for instance, to image Kate doing anything as clickbaity as wearing the emerald and diamond choker (valued at £20 million) that originally belonged to Queen Mary, as a headband, which Princess Diana famously did in Melbourne in 1988. Kate has worn it though, most recently with the £350 Solace London dress she rented for the Earthshot Awards in December.
She often tactfully references her late mother-in-law through some of her sartorial choices. Particularly notable, this year, have been her Diana-esque Alessandra Rich polka-dot dresses. But Kate’s emphatically not trying to reincarnate Diana. She’ll leave that particular tribute act to others.
Speaking of Meghan, it’s hard in any review of Kate’s sartorial year, not to refer to her sister-in-law. They’re highly unlikely not to be taking stock of one another, whatever the protestations from each camp. This year, more than ever, the two women have been defined by their very different styles. Meghan pulls out the European couture, the Martha Stewart-meets-Carolyn-Bessette-Kennedy Californian grandeur and the six figure price tags. Kate wears a three year-old MiH blouse for the Waleses’ 2022 Christmas card.
Even the British designers she trusts are not in Meghan’s Netflix-subsidised league. Besides, after more than 10 years married into the Firm, Kate’s antennae is finely tuned to the mood music, and she knows that when many are struggling to pay their bills, couture Valentino is not the way to go.
For me, the Princess’s stand-out looks this year have been the pale lemon Emilia Wickstead dress she wore during the Jubilee celebrations; the frothy green off-the-shoulder Jenny Packham ball dress, and raspberry fit and flare Vampire’s Wife evening gown from the Caribbean tour; those floaty Alessandra Rich polka-dot dresses, the blue coat, trousers and scarf-neck blouse she wore in Northern Ireland, and the impeccable, black coat-dress from the funeral. She’s at her absolute best in fuller or flared skirts and a tilt brimmed hat, but there were many other successes, including many of the trousers.
The Princess’s clothes aren’t simply chosen so as not to disappoint royal fashion watchers. They’re about reinforcing her and William’s chosen narrative of rock-solid family values. If that storytelling seems overly controlled from time to time there’s no denying the effectiveness of the optics beamed across the globe.
Kate has found a way to make reliability and good sense seem dazzling. Both the UK and the Royal family urgently need those qualities in medical grade supplies. In a year of high stakes and higher drama, the Princess of Wales has made understated good taste the most elegant response.