Fergie’s outfit could have been designed in 1986... but Eugenie’s dress was every bit as 21st Century as her guests
LET’S be honest. The wedding of Princess Eugenie to Jack Brooksbank was lovely but the most fascinating thing about it was what everyone wore. Which is not surprising since weddings are society’s red-carpet moments now that nobody gives parties any more.
Not proper parties. Yes, there are fashion house-sponsored bashes such as Cartier Polo and the Serpentine Party, or annual museum extravaganzas such as the V&A and Royal Academy summer parties, but these are all essentially promotional events – or as the former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown once quipped, ‘parties for a rising young cigar’. But glamorous private parties without a corporate logo board and a phalanx of photographers to justify their existence have become an endangered species.
Wedding celebrations, however, are on the increase. The bigger, the better. A fact which the young couple took to heart as they squeezed 200 more guests into St George’s Chapel than Prince Harry and Meghan Markle did a few months ago. ‘That’s Eugenie and Jack. They’ve got so many friends,’ explained fatherof-the-bride Prince Andrew proudly, thereby inferring that the Sussexes might be slightly lacking in that department.
Luckily for us, not only do Jack and Eugenie have a lot of friends but the combined turnout of their friends and a Royal full house meant the frock-o-meter was operating at full-tilt – starting with the bride’s dress.
In a very modern way, Eugenie had used the focus of her dress, a deep V back, to make a philanthropic statement. A thin white scar from a major childhood operation to correct her scoliosis ran from her low chignon down the centre of her spine.
It was deliberately exposed to give encouragement to others suffering from the same condition. She also chose a pair of designers, Christopher de Vos and Peter Pilotto (who operate under only Peter’s name). They are well known in the fashion world but little known outside, so Eugenie bypassed the traditional weddingdress designers or more expected names such as Erdem or Jenny Packham. Peter Pilotto are famous for their brightly coloured digital prints and bespoke textiles.
This Royal commission will have thrilled one of the brand’s major investors, Megha Mittal, of the Indian steel family. Eugenie’s dress, with its corseted bodice, long train and intricate folded bustle, had echoes of Victoriana but the wedding guests were a very 21st Century mix – TV personalities, models, aristocracy and art-world personalities. Kate Moss was placed front row in full view of the television cameras at the precise point where the princess joined her groom.
Dressed in a white and navy polka dot suit, Kate was one of the few women in an above-the-knee skirt but, more remarkably, one of few women with a 16-year-old daughter – Lila, seated one row behind – who appeared happy to wear the same style of veiled hat as her mum. Also part of the Moss group was her boyfriend Nikolai, while Nikolai’s mother, Countess Debonnaire von Bismarck, arrived in a bubblegum pink suit alongside Naomi Campbell, dressed as a flamboyant crow in a feather and sequined black dress.
The ghost at the wedding was Chinese businessman David Tang, who died almost penniless last year.
Fergie, arriving full throttle in a green outfit that could have been designed in 1986, the year of her own marriage, was best friends with this exuberant social conductor, whose generous entertaining had introduced many of the wedding guests to each other. Although the star of any wedding is the bride, we all know from our own experience that these clan gatherings are opportunities for everyone to make their own statements.
Cara Delevingne, dressed as the Artful Dodger in Emporio Armani top hat and tails, clearly wanted to tell us that she has no time for sexual stereotypes. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Holly Valance, in a figure-hugging pink shift with a crystal waistline, epitomised the trophy-wife style that her husband, the brazen property developer Nick Candy, would be proud of. Pixie Geldof showed off her fashion cred by wearing slightly tricky, bil-
lowing bubblegum Celine, while Royal ex Cressida Bonas, who has clearly moved on in her life, looked relaxed in American designer Tory Burch while sporting the informal headband alternative to hats also shared by Lady Helen Taylor and Princess Beatrice.
Beatrice played an unconventional maid-of-honour role, cannily avoiding having to traipse up the aisle behind her younger sister, dressed as an ageing bridesmaid. Instead of echoing the white dress and colourful sash of the tiny attendants, she joined the rest of the Royal Family in going for a slab of block colour in Ralph & Russo cyan blue. The Royal pews clearly hadn’t received this season’s fashion memo, which dictates clashing prints and dark florals. Instead they looked like a Pantone chart. The Duchess of Cambridge in fuchsia Alexander McQueen, the Duchess of Sussex in very sober navy Givenchy, Zara Tindall in cobalt blue, Princess Anne in an emerald two-piece, and, of course, the Queen, as usual a tiny but unmissable figure in her ice-blue matching coat dress. Not a trace of a pattern to be seen among them. But then Royals traditionally go for single colour instead of patterns because they stand out more clearly in a crowd. Not that any of them were attempting to steal the attention from the bride. And nor did they. Ultimately, despite the high celeb quotient, nobody could disagree that with her majestic gown, incredible Greville Emerald Kokoshnik tiara and the megawatt smile that couldn’t stop breaking out, this was indeed Eugenie’s day of days.