‘Free': Princess Kate’s major 2024 style overhaul revealed
The Princess of Wales has been quietly showing off a major new look recently – and it reveals a massive change for the royal.
COMMENT
Natasha Archer has been helping to dress Kate, the Princess of Wales since 2007, but you have to assume that in March this year, she faced her toughest, saddest assignment ever – what the hell does a princess wear to tell the world she has cancer?
When Kate appeared on screens on March 22 to do just that, to undertake what was the biggest moment of her life since her wedding, she was wearing … a striped top and jeans.
No nicely pressed shirt or pastel something or the sort of dress befitting the next Queen of Great Britain.
It was Mumcore.
2024 will undoubtedly go down as the year that cancer stalked the House of Windsor, not once but twice, with not only the Princess of Wales but King Charles being diagnosed too.
They are both stories that are still ongoing as we tick over into 2025 – he continues his weekly treatments, she continues her gradual return to work.
But there is another Kate story from this year that has been fascinating to watch play out.
This was the year that, style-wise, Kate stopped giving a f**k.
Her style evolution for official outings, since the death of the late Queen in September 2022, has been glorious to watch; prim knee-length dresses that made her look like a trad wife poster gal have been (largely) left by the wayside in favour of smart suits, albeit in an array of sunglasses-required, candy-like colours.
(The less said about the time she flirted with lime green, the better).
Still, the disappearance of Kate’s legs inside a nicely cut trouser was just the beginning.
It’s not just what Kate wears when she’s on royal duty that has morphed, but more broadly, how she chooses to present herself to the world.
After that March video, the next time we heard from the princess was in June when she released a highly personal statement reflecting on the “good days and bad days” she was experiencing while having chemotherapy, along with a new portrait to boot.
Again, what did she choose to wear for this photo? How did she choose to portray herself?
As just a woman in jeans, sneakers and a blazer.
The underlying message was clear – this was not a princess relaying a message down from high unto the masses but a mother, wife, sister and daughter choosing to make herself vulnerable and to share her journey with the public.
None of this was she under any obligation to do. That statement could just as easily have been released without the accompanying photo.
Instead, we got Kate the Every Woman, a princess made unflinchingly real, less the face that launched a 1000 Made in China souvenir lines (Kate bottle opener, anyone?) and more flesh and blood, actual person.
The baby, though, has not gone out with the bath water. Her day job is princess and she fulfils the KPIs for pomp and shininess nicely when required.
Come Trooping the Colour or Remembrance Sunday, the princess is still turned out as perfectly as she always has been, in exquisitely tailored pieces from the small handful of British, largely female designers she regularly opts for like Sarah Burton, formerly of Alexander McQueen, Emilia Wickstead and Catherine Walker.
Still, the arc of her style is definitely now tending towards the increasingly informal.
The slight stuffiness, the squareness of only a couple of years ago has been replaced with an unbuttoning, a casualisation and a dressing down that carries a world of unspoken meaning.
Sometimes it feels like the Old Kate, the woman who cleaved to her dress collection like a Republican frau, was a woman biding her time and politely and considerately doing what was expected while Queen Elizabeth ruled.
As the Duchess of Cambridge, as she was for 11 years, she understood the rules of the game and played accordingly. More nude hose, on the double!
Legs were crossed at ankles, ridiculously small clutch bags perma-grasped and the most useless collection of silk flowers found their way onto her head.
However, a new reign and her elevation to Princess of Wales has seemingly had a freeing effect on her wardrobe, liberating her from unspoken diktats that seemingly governed royal dressing for decades.
This year has only seen that trajectory accelerate.
Come September, and the release of a three-minute, extravagantly produced home movie that was released to announce the end of her chemotherapy and that she was cancer-free. It saw the princess tra-la-la-la-la’ed through fields in a whimsical floaty Veronica Beard peasant dress, looking like a Bryon Bay mum who has a lot of thoughts about dairy. It was down home and down home some more.
At each of the major moments this year – her cancer reveal video, her update in June and the September short movie – the image she has sought to project with her clothes has been as a woman pared back, down home, eager to throw off the fustiness and to simply be herself.
Has Kate simply learnt not to care? To not care about protocol and tradition? To not care about image-wise living up to expectations of how Conservative-voting retired colonels from the midlands think she should dress? Is she finally able to simply be her own woman?
Facing a terrifying disease, did Kate simply just think ‘sod it all’ and get out her jeans?
November and December have seen the Princess of Wales increase her official workload, appearing at formal events including Remembrance Sunday, taking part in the Qatari State visit and hosting her annual Christmas Carol concert at Westminster Abbey, each time wearing ankle length coats and dresses.
Still, here’s my New Year’s wish: that come 2025, come Kate returning ever more to showing up for her own patronages and projects, we see those jeans again.
Long may the day of the denim reign.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
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