Anything that Kate can do...
... Pippa proved she could do just as stylishly with a big day that rang more than a few wedding bells!
They were hugely competitive about who was thinnest or the prettiest
HER elegant appearance as a bridesmaid – not to mention that pert derriere – saw Pippa nicknamed Her Royal Hotness after the 2011 Royal Wedding. Some rather unkindly accused her of deliberately attempting to upstage Kate. But for Pippa, the global attention had been, she maintained firmly, ‘completely unexpected’.
‘The dress was meant to be insignificant,’ she insisted afterwards. If her words appeared to be somewhat disingenuous, it would be understandable. For what sister wouldn’t be even a tiny bit jealous of a sibling who would one day become Queen, with all the attention it brings?
But as fashion plaudits lavished praise on Pippa’s stunning wedding gown yesterday, the 33-year-old may have the last laugh.
As author and journalist Plum Sykes put it: ‘Pippa is the luckiest one of all. She gets all the right sort of attention from men, fashion designers, hostesses and things, and doesn’t have any of the duties. She’s become a princess – without the bad bits.’ What a delicious twist that would be. The rivalry between the sisters began from the moment Pippa was born in September 1983. Just 20 months apart, the girls were treated like twins.
Both joined the Girl Guides and both excelled at sport at £13,000-a-year prep school St Andrew’s in Pangbourne, Berkshire. But Pippa eclipsed her elder sister with her exceptional talent, playing hockey, rounders, tennis, running long-distance races, and captaining the school netball team.
Housemaster Kevin Allford said: ‘They both loved sport, but Pippa was particularly talented. She always smiled and was forever winning medals and trophies.’
School friend Emma Sayle, who remembers the sisters from Marlborough College, which they attended as teenagers, recalls them being hugely competitive. ‘There was always that thing; who could be the thinnest and who could be the prettiest,’ she added.
Such comparisons continued at university, even though Kate was at St Andrews and Pippa was 50 miles away in Edinburgh. They were cruelly nicknamed the Wisteria Sisters – ‘highly decorative, terribly fragrant, and with a ferocious ability to climb’.
Indeed, Kate famously captured Prince William’s attention by walking down the runway at a university fashion show in a sheer dress.
Pippa, too, made her own way up the social hierarchy, sharing a house with Lord Edward Innes-Ker, a son of the Duke of Roxburghe, and Earl Percy, heir apparent to the Duke of Northumberland.
Meanwhile, her boyfriend was aristocrat JJ Jardine Paterson, the wealthy heir of a Hong Kong banking family. Later, in London, Pippa was courted by a string of eligible bachelors and, when Kate married William in April 2011, she was escorted to the wedding by financier Alex Loudon, great-grandson of Earl Jellicoe. But the relationship ended amid claims that Loudon struggled to cope with the media attention Pippa now enjoyed.
In fact, it left Pippa at a loss. She struggled to get her career going, and was ridiculed for her book, Celebrate, and for the website of Party Pieces, her family’s events planning company.
Another serious relationship, with self-made stockbroker Nico Jackson also faltered.
But yesterday, this was all but forgotten. Multi-millionaire hedge fund manager James Matthews may not be aristocratic but his parents David and Jane are wealthy, owning the Eden Rock hotel on the Caribbean island of St Barts, and a 10,000- acre estate in the Scottish Highlands, which comes with the courtesy title Laird of Glen Affric.
So one day, Pippa will finally get her title: Lady Glen Affric.
There will be no ribbon-cutting or plaque unveiling, no bowing to Royal convention. It may well be Pippa, in the end, who has bagged the best kind of happy ever after.