In October 2021, this magazine identified a super affordable Zara dress as the cornerstone of Kate Middleton’s professional wardrobe—having been worn first for a 2020 tour of local community projects in Bradford, before the then-Duchess of Cambridge recycled it on a visit to University College London, to discuss one of the subjects closest to her heart: Early years education. It popped up again on a royal visit to the Aberfan Memorial Garden in Wales in 2023, and just this morning for an outing to the Vale of Glamorgan—both fine reasons to pull out the old reliable.
With the exception of a suede Giuseppe Zanotti pump, this dress is perhaps the hardest working item in the royal’s wardrobe. Its sensible houndstooth check and decorative neckline is symbolic of the Princess of Wales’s perceived role as one of the more approachable heads of state: a patron of several deserving charities, a group that now includes the Tŷ Hafan Children’s Hospice—a position previously held by Princess Diana while the service was in its fundraising stages—which she visited this morning during her first official “away day” since announcing she was in remission from cancer.
