There are few fashion icons in the UK quite as high profile as Princess Kate, but Kensington Palace is said to be hoping to shift focus away from her style choices back onto the “substance” of her royal work.
However, not all royal experts were pleased to hear that the palace would be adopting this approach, with one saying his “heart sank” when he heard about the decision.
Whilst the change isn’t totally new, with the palace previously saying similar things, hoping to encourage coverage of the future Queen to be focussed more on her charitable work than her looks, the reinforcement that they will not be facilitating the keen interest royal fans take in Kate’s style left the expert disappointed.
“Well my heart sunk a little bit when I say this,” said Jack Royston – royal correspondent at Newsweek – to Sky News, adding that there had been “tensions between the media and the palace over this for years”.
The expert noted that the palace doesn’t want the charity work, good causes, and positive interactions with the public to be overshadowed by Kate’s fashion choices, “but we all like to talk about the fashion because the fashion is fantastic, and it makes the royals fun, it makes them entertaining and it makes them uplifting to people because the news is very heavy, it’s very doom and gloom.”
Royston added: “The royals have all these wonderful interactions with people they meet, they love the people that they interact with, and they want us to focus on that. I think it’s a big mistake.”
The expert noted that he understood the frustration of both the palace aides – who go to great lengths to organise the official royal engagements – and the Windsors themselves, but thought the royal household was potentially missing a trick by not building on the goodwill and interest of the public when it comes to royal fashion.
“Never resent the love that people give you,” the expert said, adding, “Who is going to look back on Princess Diana’s career and think ‘Gosh didn’t we spend too much time talking about her fashion?'”
The royal expert also pointed out that the fashion industry is something that – for the most part – greatly interests women, and there can be a temptation to “downgrade” feminine interests. “People do love to downgrade things that women love, and women love fashion. It’s a business, no one says this about football, no one says why do we spend too much time talking about football, or too much time talking about sport.
“Fashion is a form of self-expression; it’s a form of art, but it’s one we all practice…it’s a really important part of the way we interact with the world, and it really made my heart sink,” when he saw the new policy from the palace.
The report that Kate was frustrated that there is so much focus on her clothes over her work saw a Kensington Palace source quoted as saying: “There is an absolute feeling that it 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.”
