The saga behind Meghan’s royal wedding dress
Emilia Wickstead is under fire for her reported remarks on Meghan Markle’s wedding dress. Victoria Moss investigates
Just when you thought you weren’t going to hear any more about the Duchess of Sussex’s wedding dress, along comes a rather out-of-character appraisal. There is, perhaps, a modern morality tale at its heart. Emilia Wickstead – the 34-year-old New Zealand-born, London-based designer who has enjoyed faithful patronage from the Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex – has ruffled feathers after less than complimentary remarks regarding Meghan’s wedding dress were aired in a tabloid newspaper and then the entire world.
Wickstead – who had been mooted as a contender for the commission – supposedly highlighted the similarities between the Givenchy gown and one of her own bridal creations, the Helene. The implication being that Wickstead thought Givenchy artistic director Clare Waight Keller was apeing her design.
Wickstead is alleged to have said that: “Her dress is identical to one of our dresses” adding, “if you choose a simple design, the fit should be perfect. Her dress was quite loose.”
The incident resulted in Wickstead publishing an apology asserting that she was “saddened by the commentary that has appeared in the press and online. I do not think that the wedding dress was a copy of any of our designs.”
And yet, what could largely be brushed off as a mischievous journalist taking self-mocking remarks out of context becomes slightly more pointed when scrolling through Wickstead’s Instagram dedicated to her bridal arm. For the day after the wedding, an interesting decision was made to post pictures of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in their finery. Said picture was tagged with Wickstead’s own label and followed up with posts of the Helene dress along with #meg ha nm ark le wedding dress .( These tags have all been removed now, though the pictures are still on her account.)
This may all sound like social media semantics, but to the casual observer, it looked rather as if Wickstead – or at least a naive social media manager – was trying to pass the gown off as her own, or suggest that they were suspiciously alike. At best, she was selling her own £7,000 off-the-shoulder creation as a “get the look”.
The actual designer of the Duchess of Sussex’s gown, Clare Waight Keller – a woman of such discretion that apparently her own husband had no idea she’d designed Meghan’s dress until May 19 – had in fact made a play on the clean, elegant signature lines of Hubert de Givenchy; who invented the clavicle-accentuating “bateau” neck for Audrey Hepburn, exaggerated on the Duchess’s interpretation.
David Haigh, chief executive officer of Brand Finance, told WWD that the Duchess of Sussex’s patronage is worth £150million to a label. On Net-a-porter alone, in the three days following the wedding, full price sales on Givenchy had increased tenfold. Waight Keller, who has been in her position for one year (previously she enjoyed a very successful tenure at Chloé) secured the kind of coup a newly installed designer could hardly dare to dream of. It is perhaps unsurprising that the dressing of the Duchess is an emotional, high-stakes game.
Yet the online reaction to Wickstead’s apparent indiscretion has been intense and unpleasant. Many of these may merely be people with nothing better to do; but could it have an impact on Wickstead’s customers? Amongst the detractors however, many loyalists left supportive notes. To wit, Wickstead hasn’t categorically denied or confirmed the reported comments, but these are difficult times for even the most media savvy; when any designer is sharply in the eye of a pile-on backlash, they must be cautious to the point of banal in case they cross a line no one could have predicted existed. The Wild West of the internet means there is no control over what is said about anyone, true or not.
The current source du jour of industry gossip is the Instagram account Diet Prada. Run by two New Yorkers, Toby Liu and Lyndsey Schuyler – previously anonymous, though recently they’ve outed themselves – it’s become a sort of bellwether for copycats.
Their MO is to post pictures of original designs next to the imitation. The duo’s exhaustive fashion history geek-ery is impressive; no lazy reference goes unexposed. They now have the clout of half a million followers, plus the riveted eyes of the entire industry. Needless to say, they’ve been caustic regarding the Wickstead saga. Every key fashion player will perhaps have chuckled, raised an eyebrow and breathed a sigh of relief, “there but for the grace of God…” Wickstead – who has said her own wedding dress was inspired by Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy gown in Sabrina (awkward) – has certainly had her credibility and pride dented. What damage this will cause to her decade-old label, not to mention her hitherto successful relationship with the Duchesses remains to be seen. But Wickstead is shrewd and talented: she launched her label serving private clients; working with off-cuts meant she saved on materials, while honing what it was her patrons really wanted to wear . Once the furore dies down, she may find little damage, and there will probably be fans of Meghan, and of Wickstead herself, who find her Helene a more affordable alternative. The lesson is perhaps that, in these blink-and-it’s-gone viral times, a brand can be exposed to an enormous audience at minimal cost, but it will also be damned in a second if transgressions are perceived. Live by Instagram, die by Instagram. It’s a mantra worth noting down.