A princess can’t be a designer queen AND a woman at Marks...
MEGHAN MARKLE wore a jumper from M&S this week and all hell broke loose. It immediately sold out online — as does everything she wears, with the possible exception of that £56,000 engagement photoshoot dress, because who’s got that kind of money at this time of year?
Keen shoppers will have to wait for the ralph & russo sample sale, where it will be reduced to £55,999 and available in size Poppet, size Elf and size Thumbelina for a limited period only.
The same stampede happens with the Duchess of Cambridge, whenever she steps out in any of her careful Stepford Wives outfits or the latest Jackie O-alike separates from reiss. Or buys a darling smock for Princess Charlotte that yum-mums then rush to order, whether they have a little girl or not.
All of which makes me wonder, who are these people: these unthinking, slavish, she-sheep whose only respite from the QVC channel is to click online to order Meghan’s or Kate’s latest outfit, then roll back towards the telly again? I mean, how unoriginal do you have to be?
Well, ahem, cough, actually this week that person was me. but only — hear me out, your honour — because the Marks & Spencer jumper was really rather lovely.
black wool, bell sleeves, deep cosy cuffs — nothing there not to love. Pausing only to note that it was a miracle I had missed it on my regular trawl through my local M&S, the one Meghan presumably also uses since it’s near Kensington Palace.
Perhaps one day we can meet there, bond over the knitwear and share a handcrafted mini-tartlet in the cafe upstairs? Perhaps not.
In the meantime, I ordered one of her jumpers. And another for my friend in America, because she’s always in the market for stylish and practical workwear, too. So does that now mean I am a victim of the Markle Effect? Or one of the causes?
Since she first stepped out in those killer cocktail shoes and that complicated cream wrap coat on the day they announced their engagement, Meghan Markle’s wardrobe has been under an international microscope.
Everything, from her Strathberry handbag to her Christmas pudding hat at Sandringham has been analysed, lusted after, dismissed, applauded or scorned, according to taste and attitude.
Ablurry picture is beginning to emerge of Miss Markle’s style; of the kind of woman she is and the type of royal she will become — but it is not making much sense.
One minute, the 36-year-old former actress is in a gaspingly expensive six-figure ballgown and a £600 Victoria beckham jumper; the next she is in £45 High Street staples like everyone else.
but who is the real Meghan? Is she the pampered, A-list, designer-clad star who helicoptered into Monaco at New year so that she and Harry could ‘party like tycoons’ in the fleshpots of the principality?
Or is she the socially and environmentally concerned princess-in-waiting who turned up at a brixton radio station this week in her Marks and Sparks jumper and her take-me-seriously hair to discuss knife crime in london? We need to know. And fast. For when she marries Prince Harry this May in Windsor, it will be the last great royal wedding for a generation.
There is global interest and much goodwill invested in this pair of royal lovebirds, but who knows how the monarchy will be regarded by the time the Queen has gone and little Prince George is ready to take a bride of his own.
It is not fanciful to suggest that how Meghan conducts herself from now on will have a bearing on The Firm’s popularity. The sound of the crowds chanting her name in brixton will have delighted those courtiers who must sometimes fear for the future. And the fact that so many young people do seem interested in Harry and Meghan — whom they regard as a ‘relatable’ couple — bodes well for the future.
The clothes thing? Well, that is harder to explain. Why do so many otherwise sensible women rush to copy Meghan and Kate?
Models such as Kate Moss and rosie Huntington-Whiteley have a different appeal to shoppers.
They both have an incredible ability to sell clothes because we women, in some complicated and chaotic corner of our hearts, hold onto the deranged notion that if we wear the sarong or the fringed skirt or the whatever, then we will look as beautiful as rosie or as cool as Kate. but that does not quite translate with glamorous young royals.
Perhaps it is the prestige we hanker after; perhaps it is a girlish penchant still to believe in the fairytale princess and the valiant prince who carries her off; perhaps it is just the simple fact that it was a darned nice jumper at a good price.
YET there is no denying that the Meghan Effect is something real — in knitwear and elsewhere. While the crowds screamed in brixton and one lady cried as she kissed Meghan, Sky’s royal correspondent rhiannon Mills reported that ‘we haven’t seen anything like this for a very long time’.
Indeed. Not since Princess Diana has there been a royal who was chic and beautiful, someone we could live through vicariously.
Someone with a hinterland of family problems, including — in Meghan’s case — a host of hillbilly relatives who seem keen to make trouble for her.
She’s got our sympathy there. No wonder she takes comfort in neutral classics and expensive, smart coats: armour against a past that threatens to haunt her.
She is no Diana, of course; nor would she want to be. but women want to be like her because fame is a powerful magnet, and royal fame is still the most glamorous of all.
However, when it comes to how she presents herself in this brave new world, Meghan has to choose. She can be the girl in the M&S jumper or the girl in the £56,000 dress. As she will soon find out, she can’t be both.