FROM FAB TO DRAB
The duchess waves goodbye to her trendy style, swapping jeans for pantsuits,
It was the sporting event that made royal fashion history: At the 2017 Invictus Games, Meghan Markle upended her rep for polished (if safe) red carpet looks with an effortless combo of crisp white boyfriend button-up and ripped jeans. She made headlines twice over: not only was it her public debut as Prince Harry’s girlfriend, but it was her official crowning as a new style icon. Unfortunately, it was to be one of her final true, free expressions of personal style. Over the course of her engagement to Prince Harry and the accompanying gauntlet of ever more formal events, she began to button up, lower hemlines, dim the palette. And since she officially joined the Royal Family in May, her sartorial independence has, disturbingly, all but disappeared. Once excited to play with pattern and shade, to take risks and show off her body (and her allegiance to Canadian designers), she has become prim, proper — and boring. Now, like generations of royalty before her, Markle is taking fashion cues — more like commands — on how to dress from her grandmother-in-law’s entourage. Elizabeth may be the Queen of England, and such obedience may be tradition, but that doesn’t make it right.
How disappointing when she has come so far, style-wise. Markle began her time in the spotlight as a pup of 25, hoisting a briefcase on Deal Or No Deal and attending her first smattering of events. Old press shots show her clad in a series of minidresses, including a prom-esque cocktail frock adorned with a big bow (and the hang-loop sticking out!), and later, in her early
Suits days, a slightly more eleganza rust-coloured disco silk. In that first heady year of dating Prince Harry, she emerged as a fashion plate, with help from her Toronto-based bestie/stylist Jessica Mulroney. Markle rocked a lot of beautiful trousers, cut both wide and slim; blazers, cuffed or draped over her shoulders; bright pumps and mules; long belted trenches; pretty cross-body bags. Clocking her slick, simple glamour, people invoked the most hallowed of fashion names: Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. They both pulled off that rare trick of elegant, yet sexy.
Once Markle’s engagement to the prince was announced (for which she wore an eye-rollingly literal wrap coat of purest bridal-white), however, her style began to morph: there was the belted winter coats in sombre neutrals, a turtleneck paired with a thick pleated maxiskirt, high-waisted black trousers worn with a loose silk black blouse, a boat-neck top in stiff Harris tweed, and that bloody acorn-like brown hat. Like, yes, she still looks chic, but viewed in aggregate, it looks like the verve is draining out of her, the youth and fun and personality waning away. Among the Windsors, conformity and conservatism is valued over creativity and freedom. And so, of course, newlywed Markle has now gone full royal, donning a conservative wardrobe in varying shades of wan, including a capsleeved, old-lady midiskirt suit in cream; a prim, white, belted embroidered shirt dress; and a pale frock topped with a Handmaid’s Tale-esque capelet, and (ugh) pantyhose. A number of outfits are studded with huge grandmotherly buttons, sternly securing her in place.
This, to me, is a feminist issue. Women have spent centuries fighting to wear trousers, to wear miniskirts, to wear whatever we want, whenever we want. To bare it all — or cover it up. It is, of course, Markle’s right to bundle herself in as many boring Burberry suits as she likes, but the issue is that she does not have any choice in the matter, not really. The dictates of decorum are ironclad, even in the 21st century. How much can Markle express herself, exactly, when she has so many decrees to follow about how to be so demure, and “appropriate”? She suddenly must follow 1,000-year-old regulations over how to dress — as well as eat, sit, walk, wave and live. Markle is now dressing like someone twice her age or centuries ago, the joy and playfulness of her red carpets past sublimated into lockstep with Buckingham greyhairs. Her newfound uniform of white, white, white is doubly creepy, positioning her solely in the pristine colour usually reserved for brides and rich folks who do not have to fear being dirtied by something so prosaic as everyday activity. It is a fitting shade for someone now pressed into service as handmaid to England.
Witnessing this assimilation into orthodoxy is especially painful for those who held out hope that Markle would usher in a new age of modern royals, complete with a more lenient dress code. Unfortunately, high-profile princesses do not have a good track record in escaping the hive mind. Fellow style icon Princess Diana showed impeccable taste during her time at the palace, but clearly she hungered for more outrageous looks. (The woman adored Versace, for God’s sake.) What did Diana do the second divorce was in sight? She shimmied into the infamous Revenge Dress: cut low, cut high, and, hopefully, cutting Prince Charles deep the night his interview confessing his infidelity aired.
As for Kate Middleton’s style? The poor dear was doomed from the start; after teenhood flirtations with skimpy clubwear, she, too, had to adopt a more matronly look the second she began dating Will, erasing a decade of potential fashion experimentation. One would hope that the sacrifice was, perhaps, easier, due to her training in the strict, stiff-upper-lip milieu of British boarding schools.
But then along came Markle. An actress! An activist! A woman of colour! A divorcée! Surely she could break the chains of convention. And yes, her wedding featured many deviations from canon: the gospel choir, the preacher’s impassioned sermon, the diverse representation, the holding hands. (Although Markle’s wedding dress was — surprise, surprise — very old-fashioned.) But these are, sadly, infinitesimal flails against an ancient machine intent on crushing all individuality and ignoring any feminist gains of the last century. Markle is now not allowed to enter a room before her husband. Last month, she was blasted for crossing her legs in front of the Queen. Their wedding announcement was printed on a scroll held by a guard in front of the palace. And 16 years ago, Markle and Harry wouldn’t have been able to even get married because it wasn’t until 2002 that royals were allowed to wed divorced people. The monarchy is modernizing? Not fast enough. Markle made a few small attempts with her nuptials. All we can hope for is for her to work for some small change from the inside — to beat against those working so hard to make someone as special as her just like everyone else. After all, that’s never a cute look.
Once excited to play with pattern and shade, to take risks and show off her body ... she has now become prim, proper — and boring