Call my stylist! Beatrice and the royals’ glow-up
The princess has topped Tatler’s best-dressed list by ditching frills. She’s not the only one.
In the unlikely event that you haven’t been following the intricacies of royal dressing recently, the announcement that Princess Beatrice, 35, has taken first place in Tatler’s best-dressed list will be – there’s no polite way to put this – gobsmacking.
If you have any pre-existing point of reference at all it will be the hat that she wore to William and Kate’s wedding in 2011. Not that it looked like a hat so much as some fancy French Empire plasterwork. It made me think of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Bring on the dancing candlestick.
Suffice it to say, Beatrice has raised her game, or rather lowered it, in that she has binned off the frills and furbelows, and the Sloaney-pony sticky-out skirts, and gone all sleek in form-fitting gowns and heels that are even higher than – whisper it – Meghan’s.
Better still, she has pushed the envelope on occasion, dared to be more than merely appropriate, most notably in an ensemble by the avant-garde British designer Richard Quinn, a floral cape gown with matching gloves, that managed to look both soignée and just a tiny bit BDSM.
Beatrice has had a glow-up in other words. Or maybe not a glow-up, exactly, in that the woman underneath the clothes (and hats) looks pretty much the same, but a rebrand; a relaunch. The stylist responsible is one Olivia Buckingham, who is blonde, skinny and – importantly – posh. Buckingham knows a good hat from a news headline in waiting, in other words. So much so that she has featured on the Tatler best-dressed list herself in the past.
Buckingham’s great-grandfather co-founded the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and she cut her stylist teeth at Hong Kong Tatler. (Tatler, a closed shop?! Wash your mouth out.) A chip off the old block, she’s all about increasing share value for her clients and establishing their worth in the marketplace that is modern celebrity.
On her books along with her old friend “Bea” is another bestie, the model-cum-professional-gadabout Poppy Delevingne (also posh) and the American rapper Eve (not posh, but who is – another Tatler coincidence – in at number 12 on the magazine’s best-dressed).
The stylist has talked in the past about how she likes to “push my clients’ boundaries but also stick to each of their authentic codes”. Her capacity to code shift herself is evidenced by the fact that she can put Eve in spangled lemon-yellow hot pants for an appearance on Love Island one minute, Delevingne in 0.1 per cent cream the next.
“I don’t want it to be one-sided,” she says of the styling process. “What I enjoy is also giving them [her clients] creative freedom, then we meet in the middle and come up with a magical look.” Beatrice is “very collaborative”.
Prince Andrew’s elder daughter isn’t the first female royal to have had a rebrand, though, what with her father’s reputational cliff dive, her new wardrobe has had to provide more air-cushioning than most. We don’t want our royals to look like us, just as we don’t want our royals to be like us.
For the past couple of generations or so, with so much happening that has been so earthbound, their clothes have often had to work extremely hard to bridge the gap.
It’s easy to forget that once upon a time Kate came across as county as opposed to Country, in her blazers that she looked to have borrowed from Carole and her frumpy above-the-knee skirts. For years now the Princess of Wales has been all stateswoman-like and sculptural, powered by British labels such as Alexander McQueen and Erdem, not to mention a look-at-me palette reminiscent of Queen Elizabeth II.
It was Elizabeth who famously once said, “If I wore beige, no one would know who I am.” It was she who, to a large degree, established something akin to a uniform for the modern royals, which switches between floaty day dresses, heavier weight skirt suits and spotlight-ready evening gowns.
It’s only recently that Kate has deviated from this blueprint – not to mention yellow and red print – and started to sport the more modern-looking trouser suits that the rest of womankind have been living in for yonks.
Zara Tindall, whose Australian stylist Annie Miall has contemporised her client’s look in a similar vein to the Beatrice/Buckingham double act, is also now rocking a trouser suit. Then again, Zara has had as her role model the original royal nonconformist, Princess Anne.
Kate, incidentally, is said to receive wardrobe input from one Pandora Delevingne, mother of Poppy, who also helps Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh. A small world indeed, although only if you are in it. However, most of Kate’s heavy lifting is done by Natasha Archer, who started out as William and Kate’s personal assistant.
Why on earth can’t these women dress themselves, you might be asking. Because it’s incredibly hard to get it right when you are in the public eye, not to mention incredibly time-consuming. Imagine the most sartorially challenging occasion you have ever experienced, then multiply it by your second, third and fourth most challenging, and add in an audience of millions. Then picture this happening at least once a week.
Yes, these are women who face the equivalent of a wedding, a job interview, a first date and a first meeting with the future mother-in-law regularly. To do it on your own would be impossible. Victoria Starmer is one “normal” who suddenly doesn’t have to imagine this scenario. The degree to which she has been getting it right – with a new Me+Em wardrobe and a stylist rumoured to be Rebecca Clouston – is evidenced by her making number ten on Tatler’s list.
Back to the royal makeovers. Queen Camilla followed a similar trajectory to her daughter-in-law years earlier, her pitch-perfect Robinson Valentine wedding attire in 2005 light years away from the kind of frosty tailoring she had been seen out and about in before that. Since then she has even worn a jumpsuit, in her favourite shade of blue.
Camilla’s love of blue has caused issues, as it happens. At group gatherings, it’s the Queen who gets first dibs on whatever colour she wants to wear. Said colour is very often blue. In early July it was reported in a tabloid newspaper that her stylist Jacqui Meakin, who originally worked for the Queen Mother, has “relaxed” her rules, according to anonymous sources, having “ruffled a few feathers at Buckingham Palace”.
Now other royal women are allowed to wear blue at the same time as Camilla, as long as it is not the same shade. Camilla’s sister Annabel Elliot is, incidentally, number five on Tatler’s list, for her “graceful satin sets and velvet suits all the way”. Absolutely not a closed shop, as I said.
The Times
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout