It’s no secret thatlots of thoughtgoes into the British royal family’s style choices, but what part does color play?
Prince Williamand Mike Tindall appeared to match their wives, both wearing ties to match.
Queen Elizabeth’s trusted aide and friend Angela Kelly wrote about how the royal family approaches colors in her book,The Other Side Of The Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe. Kelly said that when the late monarch needed an evening dress, she would lay out sketches for the Queen to pick from.
Prince William, Princess Charlotte, Prince George and Kate Middleton.Getty
“Once Her Majesty has chosen her dress for dinner, a handwritten notice is pinned up in the Dressers' Corridor detailing what she will be wearing, so that The Queen’s ladies' maids can select an appropriate dress for the lady they are looking after,” she wrote. “When it comes to the Royal Family, it doesn’t matter if they wear the same colour as The Queen because they are family, and sometimes the ladies will wear cocktail dresses even though The Queen might be wearing a long one.”
She continued, “Other guests, though, feel they shouldn’t be in the same colour as Her Majesty, although The Queen would not mind if this did happen.”
Queen Elizabethalso thought about the shade of her outfits, often wearingbright colorsfor royal engagements to stand out.
In the documentaryThe Queen at 90, the Queen’s daughter-in-law Sophie, Countess of Wessex said: “She needs to stand out for people to be able to say ‘I saw the Queen.’ Don’t forget that when she turns up somewhere, the crowds are two, three, four, 10, 15 deep, and someone wants to be able to say they saw a bit of the Queen’s hat as she went past.”
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Kate’s Christmas concert wasn’t the first time the royals have color-coordinated their ensembles. At June’s Trooping the Colour, the annual celebration of the monarch’s birthday, the royal women mainlystuck to blue hues. St. Patrick’s blue is a nod to the original symbolic color of Ireland which can also be representative of sovereignty.
It’s not surprising to see the royals coordinate for family portraits either, like Kate andPrince William’s most recentChristmas card photoor the snaps taken to celebrate King Charles' 70th birthday in 2018 — both of which when with white and blue themes.
In the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new Netflix showHarry & Meghan, she shared the thought that went into choosing her outfit colors as a member of the royal family.
“Most of the time that I was in the U.K., I rarely wore color. There was thought in that,” she said. “To my understanding, you could never wear the same color as Her Majesty [Queen Elizabeth] if there’s a group event, but then you also shouldn’t be wearing the same color as one of the other more senior members of the family.”
“So I was like, ‘Well, what’s a color that they’ll probably never wear?’ Camel, beige, white,“she continued, as photos flashed of her in a tan wrap coat during her first Sandringham Christmas. “So I wore a lot of muted tones, but it was also so I could just blend in. I’m not trying to stand out here. There was no version of me joining this family and me not doing everything I could to fit in. I don’t want to embarrass the family.”
Meghan Markle, Prince Harry and Kate Middleton at Trooping the Colour 2019.Samir Hussein/WireImage
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But during the couple’s last week of royal engagements in 2020, Meghan said in the docuseries that she wanted to “look like a rainbow,” sporting bold colors like green, red and blue.
“It was our opportunity to go out with a bang, to be honest,” Harry said.
source: people.com
