The Princess of Wales’s new style shows she ‘wants to be taken more seriously’
Many of us choose September as a clean-slate moment for our wardrobes, using the new fashion season as an opportunity to refresh the way we dress. The Princess of Wales is no different; after returning to public engagements following her summer break, she has enacted an unmistakable new style strategy.
For eight out of the ten new appearances she’s undertaken in the past three weeks, the Princess has worn either a full trouser suit or a blazer with coordinating trousers. She’s mostly chosen muted colours and she’s largely been recycling previously seen pieces.
The latest of these looks came on Wednesday, when Catherine visited the Orchards Centre in Kent, which supports children with special educational needs and disabilities. Her sharply tailored tweed Zara blazer is one we’ve seen several times before, the pillarbox red hue a sharp contrast with the quieter palette she’s adopted lately.
On Tuesday, Catherine toured textiles factories in Leicester and Leeds. In the past, such a fashion-adjacent engagement might have elicited a new outfit spotlighting one of the businesses she was visiting. Instead, the Princess opted to represent British fashion in a different way, wearing an understated bottle-green Burberry trouser suit first worn earlier this year.
If three’s a trend, then these many tailored looks point to a very deliberate change in style direction from Catherine, who has always used her fashion choices to send messages. So what is she trying to tell us here?
“It’s a look of the moment, which works well on the Princess with her long legs, and those boxy jackets suit her,” said Ingrid Seward, the editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine and author of numerous royal biographies. “She wore those ‘little girl’ dresses for so long, but now she wants to look more sophisticated. It’s more of a work-day look; she doesn’t need to be in dresses anymore. A suit is snappier and smarter.”
A year after assuming their Wales titles, Catherine and William are shaping their new roles for a modern era. “Catherine’s suits come at a time when the Waleses are making the way they work much more businesslike,” Seward said, adding that their increased workload and fresh approach to running their office, with the imminent appointment of a CEO, points to a polished and professional attitude from the future king and queen.
If Catherine has spent the past decade being viewed as a mother and young duchess, with a wardrobe of ladylike looks to reflect that perception, then now that she is in her 40s it may feel like the right time to swing the narrative.
“Princess Diana also got into power suits because she wanted to be taken more seriously,” Seward added. Indeed, the designer Jasper Conran once told me that one day in the mid 1980s, Diana had visited him and said she was fed up of ballgowns. He made her a series of sleek tuxedos to wear for evening functions instead and they became some of her most admired outfits.
Catherine’s newfound love of suits is hardly a rejection of fashion, though. In fact, every time she wears tailoring, she’s tapping into one of the biggest trends of the year. Blazers and suits have been on all the major catwalks for several seasons now - in the past week alone, they’ve been seen in the new collections at Tod’s, Hugo Boss and Bottega Veneta, proof that this is a look which is going nowhere.
“The blazer is an all-round winner for adding a touch of smartness to any outfit,” Anna Berkeley, stylist and founder of the Think Shape app. “It’s the easiest way to build a smart casual look.”
Tailoring is also an excellent tool for creating a great silhouette, Berkeley continued: “A blazer can also help us to create a waist if it’s cut in a fit-and-flare shape and can balance the body’s proportions by shortening the torso if it’s long (as it is in the Princess of Wales’s case) when worn with a high-waisted trouser. She looks fantastic in this combination.”
Any fashion editor who was once willing the Princess to be more fashion-forward with her style choices will be impressed with the way she’s so wholeheartedly adopted this androgynous new look.
And it’s understandable that she might use what Seward called “the look of the moment” to craft a serious yet chic uniform that reflects her current priorities. But there are other long-time admirers of Catherine’s style who miss her softer, more classically “princessy” outfits.
“I don’t mind the occasional trouser or suit, but she’s been wearing this style so much of late,” wrote Jane Barr, who comments on the Princess via her Instagram page, From Berkshire to Buckingham. “I really miss the beautiful dresses and coats. This is, very frankly, boring. She is the Princess of Wales. I’d like to see some more pizazz.”
The time for pizazz may come later in the autumn, especially if Catherine attends a state banquet set to be held in honour of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in November. For now, though, “blazers are more powerful than a dress, tougher and less feminine,” according to Berkeley. “The armour plating one needs to get a job done, in my book.”