Princess Catherine’s comeback channels Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady

With an upcycled designer dress, striking hat and striped tribute to Hollywood’s golden era, Catherine, Princess of Wales, brought glamour back to royal family front lines after nearly six months of seclusion.

Catherine’s Trooping the Colour appearance at the weekend demonstrated her skill at playing the perfect princess, even while receiving preventive chemotherapy for an unspecified cancer discovered in January during abdominal surgery.

Catherine, Princess of Wales, during Trooping the Colour at Buckingham Palace.Credit: Getty Images

Few people will remember the outfits of Queen Camilla, Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, or even King Charles, but Catherine’s meaningful style choices demonstrate a profound understanding of her subjects’ great regal expectations.

Let’s break down the outfit from top (the tilted Philip Treacy hat) to bottom (the white leather Jimmy Choo heels).

Going white and green

Like the late Queen Elizabeth was, Catherine is keenly aware of the power of colour for sending messages, choosing a white dress for her brief return to royal duties.

The Princess of Wales at the Trooping the Colour ceremony at the weekend (left), and before King Charles’ coronation last year.Credit: Getty

White is seen as a colour of renewal, along with purity and innocence. Catherine, along with Princess Charlotte, Queen Camilla and Sophie, wore white to Charles’ coronation in May last year. Queen Elizabeth wore white to her coronation in 1953.

Catherine wore the same dress to Trooping the Colour, with a black band altered at the waist, and a theatrical striped bow added to the neckline.

As a shade closely associated with medical professionals, white is also a subtle reminder of Catherine’s health issues, but the decision to upcycle this dress signals business-as-usual consistency.

Upcycling outfits is a tactic frequently used by Charles, Princess Anne and Camilla, who re-wore a pale green Anna Valentine coat dress to Trooping of the Colour seen at Royal Ascot last year.

White Jimmy Choo heels have been worn by Catherine to a number of official events, and her $US6059 ($9160) pearl cluster earrings from Cassandra Goad made their debut at Prince Louis’ christening in 2018.

The Keep Calm and Carry On message is driven home by the familiar choices of designer Jenny Packham and Irish milliner Treacy. Packham has created dresses for some of Catherine’s biggest fashion moments, including state dinners for South Korea and South Africa, and her golden Bond Girl dress for the premiere of No Time to Die in 2021.

Hats by Treacy have been worn by Catherine to the previous three Trooping the Colour ceremonies in 2023, 2022 and 2019.

Irish representation was enhanced at this weekend’s event by Catherine’s medal for the Irish Guards. Last week, the guards received new regimental colours from Charles, with Catherine, their colonel, unable to attend the ceremony. Instead, the princess sent a congratulatory letter signed Colonel Catherine.

My Fair Lady style: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, at Royal Ascot in 2018 (left); Nicole Kidman at Derby Day, Melbourne in 2012; and Audrey Hepburn on the My Fair Lady set.Credit: Getty Images, supplied

Our fair lady

Shopping your wardrobe doesn’t require abandoning glamour. Fresh touches such as the stiff striped bow transformed Catherine’s outfit into a My Fair Lady tribute.

Audrey Hepburn’s memorable monochrome dress with Edwardian details from the 1964 movie musical has become red carpet shorthand for sophistication.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, nodded to the original Cecil Beaton design when she attended Royal Ascot in a belted white Givenchy dress and Philip Treacy hat in 2018. Catherine’s Trooping the Colour outfit is more of a full curtsy to its inspiration, closer to Nicole Kidman’s divisive L’Wren Scott dress worn to Derby Day at Flemington Racecourse in 2012.

The humbug-striped bow at Catherine’s collar is a direct tie to Hepburn’s costume, along with the tilted hat. Fortunately, a lace parasol was not included in the aesthetic update.

In the musical, the outfit represents poor flower girl Eliza Doolittle’s introduction to society at Royal Ascot, and in the ballroom scene that follows, the commoner is mistaken for a Hungarian princess.

It’s a lesson Catherine has mastered. Clothes make the man, but a white dress with a black box, make the princess.

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