Everything the British royal family does is steeped in tradition, right down to the clothes they wear. Dresses and skirts of modest length, hats before 6:00 P.M. (but not after—that’s when the tiaras come in); wearing all-black is simply off limits, unless there is a funeral to attend. Needless to say, getting dressed in the morning is a bit more complicated when you have a title. All of this makes Meghan Markle—the divorced, biracial, ripped-jeans-wearing, equal-rights-championing, politically-minded Hollywood actress that’s soon to be wed to Prince Harry—such a breadth of fresh air, particularly when it comes to her fashion.
Not since Wallis Simpson, who sparked a constitutional crisis across the pond in 1936 by marrying into the royal family, has as much of an outsider joined the House of Windsor’s ranks. And if anyone has the opportunity to change what it looks like—and ultimately means—to be in a princess (okay, technically duchess) in the modern age, it’s Markle. So say the insiders: “Meghan will become an international role model to women of all ages, and I’m sure she recognizes this great responsibility and privilege,” Myka Meier, the founder and director of Beaumont Etiquette, tells Glamour.
Meier trained in London under a former member of the royal household, and has worked with members of the British royal family, including Prince Charles. She believes that “Prince Harry has probably been very supportive of [Markle] letting her be herself and not feel pressure to change her style.” The fact that she’s worn everything from jeans, to outfits showing off her bare gams, to stepping out for official engagements with no makeup and her hair in a messy bun, to wearing all-black are all clear signals that even in her official duties as a royal, she is most likely going to show up dressed as “Meghan” rather than a “Windsor.”
PHOTO: Mark Cuthbert
According to her superfans, it’s the very fact that Markle doesn’t appear to want to conform to the royal status quo that makes her such a compelling fashion icon in the making. “She’s modern and on-trend like we’ve never seen from a royal before,” Christine OBrien-Ross, who’s been chronicling Markle’s style on the blog Meghan’s Mirror alongside Amanda Dishaw since 2016, says. “A lot of what we see her in is just not what you would expect from someone in royal life: We know things about to her, we can relate to her, she feels like someone who would be in our girl crew—but she’s also not afraid to take fashion risks.”
If the royal family all too often runs the risk of seeming stuffy and out of touch, Markle appears to be the perfect antidote. Take the ripped jeans Markle wore to the Invictus Games for her first official appearance with Prince Harry last fall—you’d be hard pressed to think of a British royal family member wearing denim in public, let alone a distressed pair.
PHOTO: Karwai Tang
Then, there’s the outfit Markle wore to make her engagement announcement: a white trench coat and beige high-heels, sans stockings.
PHOTO: Karwai Tang
Per experts, there’s an unspoken rule that the Queen expects women in the royal family to wear nude stockings in public—Markle, like most women these days, just didn’t.
For her engagement photos, she dared to wear a sheer Ralph & Russo couture gown, with strategically-placed gold leaf embroidery for modesty. It was a sartorial choice that didn’t go unnoticed: “You’ve never seen a royal engagement photo like this,” one commentator wrote on Twitter; another wrote, “Now I love the classic, timeless elegance of Kate, but can we just take a minute to swoon at these new engagement pics of Meghan in that sheer dress..I. Can’t. Actually. Deal. Bring that sexy into the royals girl!”
The royal’s engagement photos, are, by design, a public relations campaign. Kate Middleton, wearing a modest white dress, was positioned as sweet and demure in hers. Princess Diana, in a conservative blue skirt suit and neck-tie blouse, was painted as matronly and traditional. Markle is seemingly sending an entirely different message: She’s hipper and cooler than pretty much anyone that has come before her.
“Meghan did things her own way wearing that sparkling gown,” OBrien-Ross says. “It shows that she is going to create her own path as a royal and, even in a formal gown, she is still just Meghan, that down-to-earth girl from LA.”
A sign that the world is ready for this different breed of princess? The famously tough British press has been eating up Markle’s style. A recent The Sun headline labeled her “relatable, sexy and trendier than Kate.” The Guardian calls her a “a California girl” thanks to her relaxed style. And The Financial Times referred to her as “unconventional” and “the most interesting addition to the Windsors since Diana Spencer.”
PHOTO: Samir Hussein
Markle’s biggest fashion statement, however, has yet to be seen—we’re talking, of course, about her wedding dress. Kensington Palace has been predictably tight-lipped on exactly what Markle will wear to her May nuptials. However, she’s reportedly considering Inbal Dror, an Israeli fashion brand known for figure-hugging gowns—quite the departure from Grace Kelly, or even her future sister-in-law, Kate Middleton. It may raise some eyebrows, but it’s what we should be expecting from modern royalty, insiders say.
“We need to remember this is a 21st-century royal family, and styles thankfully do change,” explains Grant Harrold, known as “The Royal Butler” and whose worked for both Prince Charles and Prince Harry. “What might not have been ‘the done thing’ in the 20th century might become ‘the in thing’ for the 21st century.”
You don’t need to look very far into their family tree to see how the Windsors have evolved royal conventions. “The Queen over the decades has changed her style and got it right every time,” says Harrold. Similarly, the Duchess of Cambridge nudged the royal family forward ever so slightly wearing affordable clothes by mass retailers like Zara. And Princess Diana famously pushed the envelope with her wardrobe during her separation and subsequent divorce from Prince Charles. Consider Markle just a much more noticeable step forward in the House of Windsor’s legacy.
PHOTO: Chris Jackson
And while it’s easy to dismiss the fashion choices of the royal family as trivial (or even inconsequential), think about the role clothes play in sending a message to the world more broadly, about who you are as a person: With girls in the U.S., the U.K., and across the globe inevitably looking to Markle as she joins the ranks of British royalty, what could it ultimately mean to them to have a different kind of princess to look up to—one who has had her own career, lives by her own rules, and is in touch with the world, all while dressing for herself? Maybe then, “princess culture” wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
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