When the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Scotland on Tuesday, I got a detail wrong about Kate. I said that she repeated a coat we had seen before. That is incorrect, although to be fair, Kate has a million blue coats and I was making an educated guess that this was a coat we had seen before. Plus, it had such a familiar vibe. As it turns out, it was a newly made coat, designed BY Kate, and she selected/designed the blue tartan fabric and everything. From the Telegraph’s Style section:
‘The Princess of Wales turns fashion designer’ was not a line I ever expected to write. And yet following Catherine’s visit to Scotland on Tuesday, Kensington Palace confirmed that the Princess had worked with Johnstons of Elgin to design the tartan-like fabric of her bespoke Chris Kerr coat, an exercise in showing her support for British textiles and design.
Such visible royal backing for a label so resolutely British (Johnstons has a royal warrant from the King and has been making in Scotland for over 200 years) will be welcomed by the UK’s fashion and manufacturing community, which is as up against it as ever with looming threats of extra tariffs and rising costs. But it also speaks volumes about how far Catherine’s own relationship with fashion has come and the newfound confidence she has to harness her vast influence.
For a long time, there was a sense that any association with fashion was almost painful to the Princess. She was so keen not to be seen as a Diana-esque fashion plate that bland skinny jeans and nude heels were the general order, despite women around the world being eager to emulate her style and some statisticians estimating “the Kate effect” could boost the fashion industry by £1 billion a year. Some fashion editors privately groaned about her “boring” choices.
This week’s coat design feels like the culmination of a year in which Catherine has sought to carve out her own way of engaging with fashion, an approach where she can use her clout to be supportive in a more profound way. The fact that two of her favourite British labels, Cefinn and Eponine, have recently announced their imminent closure, may only have added a sense of urgency to that mission.
Indeed, by co-designing the fabric of her coat, the Princess brought extra meaning and substance to her visit, which included an engagement at Radical Weavers, a Stirling-based studio and charity which promotes tartan weaving. A perfect example of fashion working in tandem with the wider work rather than detracting attention. To underline the Made in Britain message, the fabric was made up into a coat by Soho tailor Chris Kerr, known for his use of traditional techniques. Catherine also wore a kilt from Johnstons collaboration with young Scottish label Le Kilt, a traditional but directional design which could easily be part of Claudia Winkleman’s Traitors wardrobe.
They also point out that Miracle Kate is doing all of this fashion designing and fabric designing by herself, without a stylist to help her. As far as anyone knows, she hasn’t had any dedicated or even part-time stylist since Natasha Archer suddenly quit last year. Do we honestly believe that Kate is getting zero style “help” since Archer’s departure though? While I believe we would have heard about it if Kate hired a real stylist, I also believe that Kate and William are overstaffed at Kensington Palace, so Kate probably has some personal assistant-type making a lot of these arrangements. As for Kate making this extra effort to own another blue coat which she “designed” – it’s fine. QEII had one-of-a-kind pieces made and designed by Angela Kelly and Camilla uses Fiona Clare as her personal couturier as well, so I’m sure this is considered part of Kate’s queen-in-training stuff. You’d think that if Kate had this made specifically for her, the tailoring would be a lot better?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
