![\"Catherine,](\"https:\/\/elitetraveler.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/03\/kate-middleton-royal-fashion-300x213.jpg\")
<\/div>\nIt\u2019s the end of fashion month. The usual quartet of New York<\/a>, London<\/a>, Milan<\/a>, Paris<\/a> \u2013 in that order \u2013 was joined by Rome<\/a>, where Valentino has just staged a show-cum-homage to mark the passing in January of its founder, Valentino Garavani, at the age of 93.\u00a0<\/p>\n A catwalk show is a fantasy, and there was none more fantastical than this one. Alessandro Michele, the house\u2019s current creative director, is fully signed up to the froth- and frill-fuelled preferences of his illustrious antecedent. His was the ultimate palazzo-appropriate line up, its gaze firmly focused on the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/p><\/a>\n A post shared by Royal Collection Trust (@royalcollectiontrust)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n But there have been some very different visions of contemporary luxury at other shows. Maria Grazia Chiuri<\/a>\u2019s mainly black, entirely restrained debut at another Italian brand, Fendi, for example, was the exemplification of less is more; of a rigorous modernity.<\/p>\n These opposing aesthetics \u2013 replicated to a greater and lesser degree throughout fashion month \u2013 have found an unexpected resonance for me in Justine Picardie\u2019s fascinating new book\u00a0Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict and Couture<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(Faber).\u00a0<\/p>\n A riposte to anyone who argues that clothes are a superfluity,\u00a0Fashioning the Crown<\/em>\u00a0tells the story of the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century through the prism of their wardrobes, ending with the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953.\u00a0<\/p>\n These were often bumpy years. In the run up to World War I, when anti-German sentiment was at fever pitch in Britain, the family still went by the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, its lineage more Germanic than British. Rebranded as Windsor, the name was no longer a problem when World War II was declared, but there was still the small matter of a recent abdication by a Nazi-supporting king. What the Royals wore (or didn\u2019t wear, on which more anon) aided their navigation of such turbulence.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/p><\/a>\n A post shared by The Prince and Princess of Wales (@princeandprincessofwales)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Clothes are still part of the royal toolkit. The Princess of Wales\u2019 sartorial serenity is currently helping the family through the Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor-related instability. Catherine may have stated last year that her office would no longer give the details of what she wears, the better to focus on what she does, yet, the two are \u2013 pun very much intended \u2013 interwoven. She is her image.<\/p>\n \u201cThe soft power of monarchy is always expressed through visual iconography, jewels and clothing,\u201d is how Picardie put it to me recently. \u201cFor the key figures in the House of Windsor to navigate this latest crisis, they need to be as fluent in the language of fashion as their forebears. Given that they are not supposed to speak their minds, it\u2019s their wardrobe that does the talking.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The balancing act for a modern queen-in-waiting such as Catherine is how to come across on the one hand as, in Picardie\u2019s words, \u201cmore democratic and sympathetic\u201d, while also still channelling that essential \u201cmystery\u201d famously referred to by Walter Bagehot in his 1867 book\u00a0The English Constitution<\/em>.\u00a0\u201cWe must not let in daylight upon magic,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0Alas, it\u2019s not merely that there\u2019s been too much daylight recently but too much darkness.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/p><\/a>\n A post shared by The Prince and Princess of Wales (@princeandprincessofwales)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Picardie is especially compelling on another moment of royal darkness, the years in and around Edward VIII\u2019s abdication in 1936. By way of his subsequent marriage to Wallis Simpson, two contrasting aesthetics came head to head. And the potential ramifications were considerably more profound than a pair of catwalk brands jostling for commercial dominance.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the late 1930s the world order was in flux. It says something about how differently things could have ended \u2013 should he have been allowed to marry his bride and remain King \u2013 that everyone from the Nazi diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop to Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, expressed their unhappiness at Edward VIII\u2019s abdication.\u00a0<\/p>\n There was nothing more contemporary-looking, more future-facing than the \u2018hard chic\u2019 \u2013 as delivered by labels such as Schiaparelli and Mainbocher \u2013 of the woman who was rebranded, alongside her Duke, the Duchess of Windsor. Yet beneath her unquestionable chic, and her husband\u2019s, were deeply questionable politics. The couple were unabashed supporters of the Nazis, a regime that also styled itself as modernity incarnate.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n <\/p><\/a>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/elitetraveler.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/03\/fashioning-the-crown-royal-fashion-1664x2560.jpg\")
\n
\n
\n