Meet the ‘Copy Kates’ and ‘Meg Ringers’
For a dedicated group of bloggers and Instagrammers, every new royal outfit means an opportunity to go viral. Bethan Holt finds the women making duchessmarking a modern art form
What do an IT specialist from Omaha, Nebraska, an eyelash technician from Alberta, Canada, and a sales rep from Brooklyn, New York have in common? They’re the royal fashion superfans you never knew you were riveted by. If you’ve ever taken pause to wonder, “What Kate wearing?” then you are but one click away from a very comprehensive answer. Their social media accounts are obsessively updated for their thousands of followers – at lightning speed – every time a duchess leaves a palace. Take last Saturday, when grainy tabloid pictures were published of Meghan watching Harry compete in the Audi Polo Challenge. Within minutes, the editors of UFO (that’s Unidentified Fashion Object) No More, had leapt into action and tracked down the gingham Shoshanna dress – a discontinued style from last year – which Meghan was wearing. “How did you do that so quickly?” and “Congrats on your discovery!” came the sisterly comments from fellow Meghan maniacs. “It’s like a social club from school,” says Laura Faurot, 25, the IT specialist and co-editor of UFO No More, who puts her techy skills to use finding archived versions of web pages with which to identify the Duchesses' clothes.
While Faurot’s gateway to royal style obsession was fashion – she built up an encyclopedic knowledge from studying style.com (the now defunct website that listed every look ever shown on a catwalk) in her teens – her fellow bloggers tend to be what could only be described as purist royal fanatics.
“I started following and chronicling Kate Middleton back in 2010, and was just mesmerised by her glamorous life while dating Prince William,” says 40-year-old Janelle Nash from Scottsdale, Arizona, who runs her royal Instagram accounts full-time, styling herself head-to-toe in “replikates” and “replimeghans” (the art of copying a duchess look head to toe).
For others, the genesis of their hobby goes further back: “I became obsessed with Princess Diana when I was 10 years old,” offers New Yorker Sarah Miello, whose account @theroyalwatcher has 17,900 followers. She said: “I just fell in love with the Royal family. I’ve read tons of books on everyone from Queen Elizabeth to the Duke of Windsor.”
“I think my mother breastfed it to me. She loves the royals, although she says when the Queen dies, that’s it for her. This next generation doesn’t quite do it for her,” muses Jami Molcak, who has 133,000 followers at @ royalteawithjam. Though unlike her mother, she loves the Cambridges so much that she made the 10-hour trip to catch a glimpse of them on their last visit to Canada.
In an age where the Kardashians reign supreme as style influencers, what unites these royal superfans is their idealisation of our duchesses as antidotes to the transient drama and shallow veneer of celebrity – even if Meghan was one, too, not so long ago.
“Kate and Meghan are worlds away from being mere celebrities. Their titles, royal residences, responsibilities and patronage of good causes elevate their importance,” says Nash. Crucially, they’re both lifers now, they can’t get dropped from the public eye when they release a bad film. They’re a sure bet for an obsessive.
“Kate is such a very strong woman in that she knows how she wants to live her life and she doesn’t appear swayed by outside pressure. She is often vilified by anti-fans for not working enough, which I think is nonsense, and she persists despite the pressure to conform to an outside standard,” adds Jane Barr, a 29-year-old lawyer who runs “From Berkshire to Buckingham”, a website and an Instagram account.
“I love royal style because it’s modest and elegant. I believe classiness is more attractive than showing your goods to the world,” enthuses 35-year-old May Mara, who juggles running a wreath company in Pennsylvania and bringing up her two children, with her @britishduchess account. Her USP is the memes that she creates using candid photos of the Duchess of Cambridge: “When your husband is attempting to fix something you know he has no experience in,” reads one, alongside a photo of Kate looking alarmed as William attempts archery.
If you’ve ever wondered who exactly it was buying up anything that Kate or Meghan wears, then these are your women. For them, emulating royal style is an earnest occupation
that takes up hours each week.
“I have no idea of the exact amount of replikate/ replimeghan items that I own.
I've considered reconfiguring my wardrobe to make more space, which is insane,” says Mara, citing Kate’s Nike Vapormax trainers, Meghan’s Ray Ban sunglasses – glimpsed through a car window the day before the royal wedding – and Meghan’s Strathberry Mid Tote as her favourite purchases.
Mallory Bowling is a 30-year-old lawyer from Virginia who uses her blog (thepalaceavenue.com) and Instagram (@lady.m.replikates) to chart her experiments in dressing just like Kate, Meghan and Pippa – “it’s a creative outlet to express a bit of frivolity and fun in contrast to my day job,” she tells me. Her latest purchases are the £39.99 Zara sundress and Russell and Bromley espadrilles that Kate has been seen in this summer.
For Nash, who used to work in an art museum, four to eight hours each day are spent scouring the internet for old items and looking at new pictures of the royals.
It’s still a hobby at the moment (although some accounts have made a business from earning revenue from the links to items they post), but one which she takes very seriously. She has nearly 31,000 followers on her replikate page and 16,500 on her replimeghan page. “My favourite find was when I tracked down Kate’s Temperley London ‘Odele’ coat while shopping at Bicester Village. They’d just received the coat that morning and I was thrilled,” she remembers.
What toll does royal superfandom take? “My husband says it takes up too much time with no financial return. My children think it takes me away from them. But there is always another post that needs to be made. Somewhere we have found a happy medium – or they have just accepted my craziness,” says Molcak.
Often, the family is roped in to help. “My husband takes most of the photos and he’s been incredibly supportive,” says Bowling. “And if I’m visiting my parents, they’ll step in as photographer as well.”
For Stephanie Albrecht aka @budget_duchess, her latest mission has been to enlist her husband and daughter to feature in her posts.
In February, the couple re-enacted a picture of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge skiing. “He is a good sport about the whole thing and very patient. He thought he would never actually wear the jacket he wore in our couple post again, but ended up loving it all winter, so it paid off for him.”
Albrecht is expecting her second child and, naturally, she has snapped up several of Kate’s favourite Seraphine maternity dresses – and has started dressing her little girl in "replicharlottes".
“I just love how timeless and adorable the outfits are. I think my daughter will look back on the photos of her now and still think the clothes are cute and not dated looking, that is my hope anyway.” Mara, meanwhile, is currently fixated with a search not for her own next replikate, but for the pony-covered Cath Kidston rucksack that Princess Charlotte was photographed in on her first day of nursery.
“It’s basically impossible to find,” she bemoans. “My goal was to have it for my daughter when she started kindergarten in September, but that’s not looking promising at this point.”
It’s not all jolly repliroyalling. As with almost every sphere of social media nowadays, these royal disciples must endure negative comments and occasional disputes with their followers. Sometimes, it can be as tame as an innocent disagreement about an outfit. “Everybody loves a tiara moment, but any time a royal is wearing something a little different, it attracts a lot of chatter,” says Faurot. “Like when Kate wore Er dem in Sweden, it was quite polarising. I liked that they had a point of view, but for me there were too many elements going on.”
“The hardest moments being a royal fashion blogger are sometimes seeing the negative media posts or harsh public criticism of both Duchess Catherine, Duchess Meghan and, indeed, the royal bloggers at times,” reflects Nash.
“It also takes real courage for myself and my replikater friends to post our side-by-sides. A thoughtless comment can and does sting.”
“The worst moments are when people criticise my account,” agrees Molcak. “It’s my baby. I put a lot of time and effort into it, and once in a while, not very often, but someone might judge it by a single post and that hurts.”
Superfans stick together, though, often sourcing items for one another or sharing information. “We send postcards to one another and have even started a book club called Royally Good Reads on Facebook,” Bowling adds. With some such accounts gaining as many as 100,000 followers during the weekend of Harry and Meghan’s wedding, the numbers suggest that many of us are as obsessed as they are.