Well, it was a work trip. If Princess Catherine’s first solo trip since re-entering public life after taking time away during her cancer treatment was less a jewels-and-tiaras royal tour than a study in suits on the ground, that’s not an accident. It’s the point.
Rather than play the part of the symbolic royal during her two-day visit to Italy this week, Catherine used the visit to quietly underscore the fact that even though she will one day live in Buckingham Palace, she is also doing a job. She can still wear a sparkling ball gown with the best of them (and does, when required) or wave from a balcony. But these days, she’s more likely to be found in a blazer. And not a tweedy, hiking-in-Balmoral kind, but a sleek C-suite kind.
Consider, for example, her whistle-stop tour through Reggio Emilia. There to study the local approach to early childhood learning for the Royal Foundation Center for Early Childhood, an initiative she introduced in 2021, she arrived in a cerulean blue pantsuit by the London designer Edeline Lee. Worn with a collarless white silk shirt and a pale blue Asprey bag, the look took the color theory dressing of her grandmother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, and gave it an executive spin.
The next day, visiting various schools and making pasta, Catherine modeled the same approach in a pinstriped taupe Blazé Milano jacket worn over a long pleated cream skirt and matching T-shirt.
In each instance, the tailoring was precise, with a power shoulder. If anyone thinks that’s coincidence, there are some ermine robes I can sell you.
After all, given Catherine’s position, the collective national intake of breath that greeted the news of her cancer diagnosis, and the attention paid to every move since, the princess clearly knew that all eyes were going to be upon her — and not just in Italy, where she was swarmed on arrival.
She has proved herself adept at using visual language to make a statement, whether about family unity in the face of rumors via coordinated dressing, about sustainability by re-wearing pieces from her closet (including that pinstriped jacket) or about cross-border engagement through fashion. For proof, simply check out the @princeandprincessofwales Instagram account, with its 17.2 million followers, where the images, including multiple posts from Reggio Emilia, offer their own narrative juice.
If Catherine is wearing suits, it’s not because she thinks they’re trendy.
Suits are a collective totem, as much as any crown: of professionalism, management, competence, the office. Suits tell a story everyone can immediately see and understand. That’s what stood out on this trip, more than the fact that on Day 2 the princess wore an Italian brand. Sure, that was a nice gesture. But as a one-off, it was less important than the consistent choice of the outfit itself.
Perhaps, in this case, her choices were a reminder that the royal family, often under fire for being a luxurious anachronism that has some moral rot at its core and that costs more taxpayer money than it returns (see the former Prince Andrew), is actually a tool of soft power, working effectively for the country.
Perhaps they were also an effort to embody the modernization of the institution that King Charles and Prince William have espoused and that Princess Diana, who also was partial to a blazer, once represented.
Pantsuits may reek of old-fashioned executive tradition in the wider world, but in the context of women and the British monarchy, they count as a contemporary adaptation. Suitable, even.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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