Can Kate control the royal fashion information pipeline?
By no longer releasing clothing details, the Princess of Wales wants to shift the focus to her royal work
“Princess of Wales: Focus on my work not my wardrobe,” was the headline in the Sunday Times on February 1. As royal editor Roya Nikkah wrote:
Now, in a move signalling her wish for the focus to be on her work not her wardrobe, Kensington Palace will no longer release details of her outfits.
Since Kate, 43, became a member of the royal family when she married in April 2011, Kensington Palace has routinely issued details of the clothes she wears on public engagements to some members of the media. But that will stop now the princess is continuing with her gradual return to work after completing her treatment for cancer last year.
Will it work?
It helps to know more about the process. For decades, palace communications shops have often released basic information about royal clothing to reporters covering an event. These aren’t head-to-toe clothing, accessory and make-up notes that stylists often provide for celebrity clients but rather often a few words about the brand of the outfit. On Christmas Day, as Kate walked to church at Sandringham wearing a long green coat and hat, Rebecca English, royal editor of the Daily Mail, posted on social media, “The Princess of Wales is in a coat by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen.” Sometimes no details are given (and yes, the fashion information is usually for what what royal women wear).
At the same time, a band of online royal fashion sleuths comb the internet to fill in details on the particular dress or coat, plus accessories and jewellery. For Kate’s Christmas Day look, that McQueen coat had first appeared in January 2023 at one of Kate’s Shaping Up engagements. She also rewore her Gina Foster felt beret and Grace Han handbag. Her black boots were by Gianvito Rossi, while her topaz-and-diamond earrings were new, from Robinson Pelham, which designed the earrings she wore at her wedding in 2011. Sometimes, initial IDs are corrected as more images are posted. So on that cold day at Sandringham, her black gloves turned out to be the Imogen not Alice style by Cornelia James. All those details can be found in the bottom of that day’s post on the What Kate Wore site, the oldest site dedicated to the fashions of the Princess of Wales.
Which brings us back to the communications change from the Princess of Wales’s staff at Kensington Palace. As a source told the Sunday Times:
“There is an absolute feeling that it [the public work] is not about what the princess is wearing. She wants the focus to be on the really important issues, the people and the causes she is spotlighting. There will always be an appreciation of what the princess is wearing from some of the public and she gets that. But do we need to be officially always saying what she is wearing? No. The style is there but it’s about the substance.”
For Susan Kelley, the owner of What Kate Wore (WKW), the new strategy sounded familiar: “Is it the third or fourth time KP has issued this edict?" Kelley would know — she’s been following Kate’s fashion since before her wedding to Prince William in 2011. When it comes to sites dedicated to Kate’s fashion, Susan Kelley is “the OG blogger” (original gangster).
WKW began as an outgrowth to another blog. Kelley realized that readership and engagement went wild any time she wrote about Kate, especially her fashion choices. The two most popular type of posts are a) when Kate attends formal events — “There’s nothing bigger than a tiara appearance” — and b) tour wardrobes, especially when there are multiple ensemble changes every day plus figuring out if an item is a tribute to a country (eg., wearing a maple leaf brooch in Canada).
Like other royal fashion sleuths, Kelley has never relied on Kensington Palace. “We find the things ourselves,” she explains. No detail is too small. Indeed, there is a whole group of people on social media who cover royal and celebrity fashion across Europe and share the information (the discussions about what towering pumps may be worn can go on for weeks). Often, fashion pieces in more mainstream media outlets have their origins on these more specialized accounts and sites.
While the princess would like attention to be placed squarely on her activities, the media and royal fashion blogs have the ability to talk about both her work and her fashion at the same time. The main focus of the media on that day of events in Wales was on her visit to children's hospice and going to the Corgi textile factor, while her Zara outfit was mentioned in passing. Several days later, the media reported on the latest report from the princess’s Centre for Early Childhood that sets out 30 “crucial life skills” to be taught during a child's early years.
For more than 10 years, WKW has always started its posts with information about the purpose of the engagement, putting fashion details at the end. Her post about the Wales trip began with 1,800 words about the work, then 300 words about the fashion. That’s a fairly standard ratio — for the site’s post on this week’s engagement, which saw young children going to the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of a program co-developed by the Centre for Early Childhood, WKW had 1,100 words on the engagement, with another 300 on Kate’s fashion.
Kelley can understand the princess’s wish for control and change, especially after undergoing such a serious health crisis, which can cause reevaluations of one’s life. “When I ran a newsroom, I issued regular reminders about policies,” she notes. “The mandates from the palace have that feeling.” At the same time, she notes that this sort of edict has been issued before, including one in November 2022.
At the same time, she wonders about how effective it will be in today’s world: “I don’t think anyone controls the conversation anymore. The harsh reality is that people will go online and seek out information. There are many, many ways to get free info about what the Princess of Wales is wearing.”
Trying to control the narrative can backfire, especially in an era where everyone has a smartphone and the ability to search online. Last year, Kensington Palace revealed so little about Kate’s surgery and post-operative condition that the information vacuum was filled by wild rumours and disinformation churned up from the bottom of the fetid social media pond. People created their own updates, says Susan Kelley, who noted that she received emails and texts from people she describes as “non-conspiracy theorists,” all asking variations of “Kate’s dead, isn’t she?”
Even mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times, wrote about the chaotic whirlwind. Yet her privacy was respected by the mainstream media. As the New York Times reported in March 10, on the day Kate released a digitally manipulated image of her with her kids for Mother’s Day,
Last week, a grainy paparazzi shot of Catherine, riding in a car driven by her mother, was posted on the American celebrity gossip site TMZ. British newspapers and broadcasters reported widely on the photograph, but did not publish it, honoring the palace’s appeal that she be allowed to recuperate in private.
As well, there’s a financial impetus in discussing Kate’s fashion. Her high-low style has transformed her into a global fashion icon whose choices can generate sales for companies both large and small. After she accessorized her Zara dress with gold-plated trapezoid hoops from Spells of Love, the local Welsh brand quickly promoted the pre-order opportunity to own those CAD$160 earrings on their site.
In addition, sites like What Kate Wore attract audiences from outside the United Kingdom who aren’t regularly exposed to articles specifically about royal charities and other projects. For them, fashion sites can provide that information, as one comment in the WKW blog section illustrated: “I have learned just as much about her work as her fashion over the years but it was the fashion that dragged me in. “
“More than 50 percent of readership is in the U.S.,” says Susan Kelley of What Kate Wore. “They know more about charitable endeavours because of her fashion. It’s the hook to draw people in. Why not capitalize on that to get people engaged?”
My latest Royal Roundup on Global TV’s The Morning Show on Feb 3: