Sure, there’s a lot of anticipation placed on the dress for the royal wedding, but some of the strongest sartorial moments to come out of Saturday’s festivities may well occur on a body not belonging to Meghan Markle. Don’t believe us? Consider meme-generating hats sported by Princesses Beatrice and Princess Eugenie at Kate and William’s royal wedding in 2011, which ignited an ardent interest in festive hats among American women and arguably introduced the word fascinator to the lexicon on this side of the Atlantic.
On the eve of a wedding where hats will no doubt be front and center among the wedding guests, Glamour spoke with Ellie Fennell, co-owner of esteemed London milliner Bundle MacLaren, whose wares have graced the heads of Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Pippa Middleton, and Princess Eugenie. Fennell, whose ready-to-wear and bespoke pieces start at around 150 pounds, couldn’t go into detail about the “more than a dozen” pieces her atelier is working on for the big day, but she did agree to speak in broad terms about what kind of headwear we can expect—while also offering up some context on the thoroughly British legacy of spectacular headpieces.
PHOTO: WPA Pool
Actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw in a Bundle MacLaren hat at an event at Buckingham Palace earlier this year
Turns out, most Americans—like some Stateside cousin with a two-episode story arc in Downton Abbey—are woefully out of our depth talking about hats. “I’d like to clarify what you mean [when you use] the word fascinator,” Fennell began. “Americans use the word fascinator to refer to something different than British people do when they use it.”
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“In England the term is slightly derogatory and means kind of a hairband or hair clip with feathers—it’s a very, very small token gesture that you wear on your head,” says Fennell. “What Americans mean by fascinators is the button-style of hat, which we still call a hat.”
With this information in mind, we decided to pull back and begin with the very basics: If I’m going to a wedding in England, what do I need to wear on my head? “At a society wedding—and the royal wedding counts as a society wedding—women are required to wear hats,” says Fennell. “But, to be an appropriate guest, you don’t need to be wearing a wide-brimmed hat as wide as your shoulders. It could be four to five inches wide, covered in silk.”
“By the English definition, I would doubt very much that there will be many fascinators at the wedding,” Fennell continued. “But 80 percent of the hats we’ve done for this royal wedding would come under the American definition of a fascinator.” In other words: There’s a good chance there will be a lot more of these than these, but there will almost certainly be none of these.
But while fascinators, by the American definition—a qualifier we’re now going to try to work casually into conversation to impress our friends every chance we get—might still be all the rage, Fennell cautioned us not to expect too many sculptural, vertiginous versions at the royal wedding.
“If you recall Kate and William’s wedding, there were quite a few hats that really stole the headlines,” she says, diplomatically. (Whatever could she be referring to?) “And I think that’s affected people. That wedding was seven years ago, and Instagram and social media are so much more prevalent and things do take on a like of a life of their own.”
PHOTO: Chris Jackson
A wide-brimmed style hat at the last royal wedding in 2011
“Most of the ladies that come into my shop are in this sort of dilemma of ‘I have to look immaculate and perfectly groomed, but I also don’t want it to look like I’m trying to steal all of the headlines from the bride,’” says Fennell. “It’s a very difficult balance to get right. Once they’re sat down in the church, the only thing other guests are going to see is the hat. So it really boils down to getting the hat right.”
“Once they’re sat down in the church, the only thing other guests are going to see is the hat. So it really boils down to getting the hat right.”
Admittedly, we’re skeptical that anyone would be able to upstage Markle on her wedding day, but we respect the sentiment.
One thing you apparently definitely won’t see at the wedding? Veiling.”You really see that more at Ascots,” says Fennell. “At a wedding like this one, there’s too much air-kissing for guests to opt for veil-detailing.”
PHOTO: Danny Martindale
Guests in fascinators (by the American definition) at the last royal wedding in 2011
And the question we’ve been dying to know the answer to: Will hats ever become a more consistent fixture at weddings in America? Fennell took a long pause. “I’m just as confused by this as you,” she said, finally. “I’ve worked with so many American women who are so excited by hats and love hats and want to wear hats, and yet for some reason the tradition hasn’t taken off at American weddings,” she says. “Well, certainly as of yet.”
PHOTO: Max Mumby/Indigo
Kate Middleton wears a fascinator (by the British definition) in 2008.
One piece of advice for anyone—on either side of the pond—looking to get the look exactly right: Don’t match your hat to your outfit. “Someone who’s never worn a hat before might come into our store and say, ‘I’m wearing a red dress so I need a red hat.’ And we’ll say, no, you need a hat that complements your outfit,” says Bonnell. “So we’ll ask, ‘What shoes are you wearing? What jewelry are you wearing? What handbag are you wearing?’ It might be nice then, to have a navy hat, with red petals going through the hat.”
“The matchy-matchy—that’s really eighties,” she concludes.
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