Perfect in pink or too prim? Kate’s £428 silk frock splits Britain

IN London to speak about mental health yesterday, the Duchess of Cambridge turned heads in a £428 pink silk Kate Spade dress that left fashion fans firmly divided. Here two of the Mail’s style experts slug it out over whether Kate’s dress was a master str

THIS is the dress that little girls playing princesses dream about — and one to make every grown woman’s heart soar, too.

Following season after season of dour, dark masculine fashions such as culottes and trouser suits, this dress finally heralds the welcome return of femininity.

It made Kate look beautiful and confident – and proves that no woman should shy away from wearing pink.

The colour brings out the sparkle in her eyes and the blush in her cheeks, and makes her seem all the more powerful for rejecting the notion that a woman should ape a man in her style of dressing in order to be taken seriously.

The knee length is appropriate, while the blowsy rose print, pleats and oh- so-trendy pussybow neckline keep the look the right side of fashion forward – they’re all huge trends this season, after Miu Miu and Prada both showed similar prim dresses on the catwalk.

Designer Kate Spade, a sensation in the US where she has SO prim. So saccharine. So totally ageing and inappropriate for a 34-year-old woman. Even Margaret Thatcher, the queen of pussy-bow necklines, would have turned her nose up at Kate’s fussy confection.

The dress should work, as it ticks off all of next season’s trends – but in Kate’s hands, it simply looks frumpy.

It would look wonderfully insouciant and mischievous worn with flair: you can imagine Alexa Chung styling it with a little Chanel jacket and a pair of brogues or Sarah Jessica Parker pairing it with statement earrings and a colourful heel.

But here it’s worn with so little imagination the effect is just ‘blah’. The nude heels, the dated blow-dry, the sheer tights and the matching clutch bag leech the life from it, and turn Kate into another identical Sloane off to a garden party.

The pussy-bow neckline is a nod to the Eighties, which are firmly back in fashion, but teamed with her big, Dallas-style flicky blow-