When it comes to her style, Meghan Markle has a habit of breaking with royal traditions. Even as a duchess, she loves her dark nail polish, collarbone-bearing bateau necklines, and pantsuits—precedents be damned. Naturally, the media goes bananas every time she seems to go against “protocol,” whether it’s with her outfits or with her email schedule. Inside the palace, though, the narrative is totally different.
“You read all the time about Meghan breaking protocol by wearing dark nail polish, Meghan breaking protocol by wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, breaking protocol by wearing black or by not wearing tights. She’s not breaking royal protocol. There is no book of royal etiquette,” royals expert Katie Nicholl tells Glamour. “She’s just doing things differently. I don’t think that is causing huge problems at the palace—if Meghan steps out wearing dark nail polish, I don’t think it’s upsetting anyone.”
According to Nicholl, there was one instance when Markle’s wardrobe may have ruffled Kensington Palace’s feathers. And it had more to about what she didn’t wear.
“I think possibly eyebrows were raised when she didn’t wear a hat on her first official engagement with the queen, and I do think that was a mistake,” she says. “But I think, other than that, people get their knickers in a twist unnecessarily so.”
You’ll recall that last June, shortly after her wedding, the newly appointed Duchess of Sussex made a joint appearance with Queen Elizabeth II in Cheshire, England. Markle wore a custom Givenchy Haute Couture dress, Sarah Flint heels, and earrings gifted to her by her new grandmother-in-law. No hat, though.
Markle’s lack of headwear did spark some headlines at the time. According to the Daily Mail, royal aides actually informed the duchess that the queen was planning to wear a green hat in honor of those who died in the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire—which meant, more or less, that she should’ve followed suit. “I don’t think the duchess fully understood,” a senior figure close to the queen told biographer Robert Jobson for his 2018 book Charles at Seventy: Thoughts, Hopes and Dreams. “This was not a request. They are for others to make, not the queen.”
That being said, Nicholl also tells us the queen and Markle have a great relationship, so any of this “hat drama” from last summer is obviously squashed.
“She likes Meghan,” Nicholl says. “She’s very impressed with her work ethic. I’m told she was surprised and impressed Meghan carried out that tour of Morocco when she was so heavily pregnant. The queen is arguably the hardest-working member in the royal family, and I think she likes what she sees in Meghan.”
If you want more tea on the royals, pick up Katie Nicholl’s book Harry and Meghan: Life, Loss, and Love, out April 9.
