The royal fashion mystery that keeps me up at night
the strange case of one of Princess Kate’s most quietly controversial looks
Whenever Garden Party season rolls around, I’m reminded of the royal fashion mystery that keeps me awake at night. The year is 2022, the Royals are gearing up for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, and Kate turned up to a May 25th garden party at Buckingham Palace looking like she’d just stepped off the set of a 1930s period drama.
But this wasn’t the first time we saw the then-Duchess of Cambridge wearing this particular mint green number. Kate first wore the dress for a 2019 reception at Buckingham Palace marking the fiftieth anniversary of then-Prince Charles’s investiture as Prince of Wales.
The blog “WhatKateWore” pointed out at the time that “the dress was reminiscent of the ‘Sabitri’ by Beulah London, but The Daily Mail’s Caroline Parr confirmed this was not by Beulah.” Later, royal reporters passed on intel from the Palace: the dress was by Kate’s private dressmaker. Now, a “private dressmaker” can refer to anything from an in-house Palace staffer to a discreet freelance couturier—sworn to secrecy, of course.
Even later, though, eagle-eyed royal watchers (on Tumblr, IIRC), pointed out similarities between Kate’s dress and a style by Russian designer Ulyana Sergeenko.
While some minor details (the cuff length, the number of buttons on the front and the height of the collar) were changed for Kate’s version, the essence and even color family of the design were the same.
