2020 Royal Recap
It’s been quite a year for the royals, who managed to still celebrate moments of national importance, support their patronages, raise spirits, handle virtual school and work from home. I’ve rounded up my Top Four moments in a few categories - both serious and fun!
Milestones
Princess Beatrice’s Wedding to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi was the top royal moment of year! From the dreamy vintage dress she borrowed from The Queen, the photo with her grandparents (including the rarely seen Prince Philip), the over-the-top florals of my dreams and finally just the look in both of their eyes. It was the best surprise of the entire year.
Princess Anne’s 70th birthday was another highlight of the year. The PR campaign rolled out a series of interviews with her on different aspects of her life and the tidbits were amazing! Anne is just the snobbish, smart, hard-working woman that I thought she was. The portraits of her were also gorgeous!
Prince Louis celebrated his 2nd birthday with the cutest series of photos. They showed him making rainbow print hands, a symbol in the UK that children were putting in their windows during the spring lockdown.
My top non-UK milestone was the 10th wedding anniversary of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden. They released the most incredible series of romantic portraits taken at Gustav III’s Pavilion at Haga Park, located next to their home Haga Palace.
Fashion Highs
At one of Kate’s first public appearances of the year, she wore what was my signature look last winter, a leopard midi skirt with a black cashmere sweater and suede boots! She looked stylish, modern and also comfortable enough for the work she was doing in schools across the UK.
I strongly suspect that Camilla got a new stylist, as her looks have been on point the last 6 months. She wore several striking capes and also wowed with a huge variety of color coordinated masks - the most and best mask fashion from anyone in the family!
Charles’ sustainable suits made him a Vogue fashion star as part of promoting the Modern Artisan Project, a partnership between the Prince’s Foundation and Yoox Net-a-Porter to create a technology and sustainability-driven fashion collection. He talked about how he repairs and rewears suits and shoes - did you know he has been wearing the same suit to weddings for decades??
Kate and Sophie matched in red at a January reception for the UK-Africa Investment Summit. Kate’s sparkles and Sophie’s classic silhouette were chic and also a nice patriotic nod. It was one of the few formal events we were able to see, so looking back it had even more impact!
Fashion Lows
Kate’s fashion choices usually really work for her - but this green on green look that she opened the Ireland tour with last winter was A LOT. I actually liked the dress better when it was under the dark green coat, but on it’s own, there is simply just too much pattern.
Meghan’s Commonwealth Service look was another green look that flopped. After several strong monochromatic looks at their final official royal events. she really missed the mark with this at her last appearance. The dress is not properly tailored, her strapless bra is very visible (this is a recurring issue), the cape looks like it’s strangling her and she goes against royal norms of wearing red and blue to this event to represent the flag. While standing out is good, doing so to snub your in-laws at a televised event is pretty tacky.
Did we see Prince Harry wear anything other than a gray polo shirt post-Megxit? With the exception of a handful of more formal zoom events, the polos were everywhere, making us wonder if it’s just a very boring capsule wardrobe, or a statement about sustainability and an intentional desire not to have his style dissected? Either way WE ARE BORED!!!
While I admire love Kate’s fashion, she did seem to almost exclusively wear midi-length dresses this year. I know they make it easy to move around without exposing anything un-dignified and are flattering on her tall, athletic figure, but I just wish we would have seen a little bit more variety!
Campaigns
Camilla has been working to bring awareness to domestic violence, as the patron of Safe Lives, especially during lockdown when it got much more dangerous. She launched the hashtag #EveryonesProblem and gave the keynote speech at the Women of the World festival, met survivors and wrote an op-ed for The Guardian.
William had an incredibly impressive “Climate Week” during the fall, that started with the debut of his documentary Prince William: A Planet For Us All. He then officially launched the unprecedented Earthshot Prize, which will award five, one million-pound prizes each year for the next ten years, providing at least 50 solutions to the world’s greatest environmental problems by 2030. He secured funding and support from the world’s biggest philanthropists and environmental organizations, a high profile judging panel, media partnership with the BBC and tweets of support from the Obamas and other world leaders. He also then spoke at the first free TedX conference about the prize.
Kate’s work with the Early Years was incredible. She launched the 5 Big Questions nationwide survey in January, which received a record-setting response (more than 500K) which resulted in her 5 Big Insights study and will shape programs and projects in coming years, she appeared on the Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast, and during Covid organized 19 huge retailers to donate more than 10,000 items to Baby Banks. She also launched an online platform with the BBC called “Tiny Happy People” that helps parents and children age 0-4.
During the UK lockdown, Kate partnered with the National Portrait Gallery to launch Hold Still, a photography competition to show the impact of the virus on regular people. It received 31,000 submissions, and the 100 winners were incredibly moving. After releasing the virtual gallery, they also posted select images in outdoor spaces across the UK for the public to enjoy.
Room for Improvement
The Sussexes post Megxit. Covid has definitely had the largest impact on the Sussexes plans this year, as they were unable to fully launch their new brand and make waves in Hollywood. While they have landed big deals with Netflix and Spotify, they have also hired paparazzi to photograph them doing charity work, made big events like Remembrance Day all about them, and consumed headlines with their legal drama. As much as they have made some big strides, they can’t seem to quit the drama.
The royals just can’t seem to escape divorce drama, the latest being Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips and his wife Autumn. While it all seems to be fairly amicable, it is sad to see another divorce in the family.
The Crown this year took on the 1980’s and in the process enraged royal watchers and experts with the inaccuracy. While I love seeing the history come to life, and Googling to find out the true events, the show definitely took many narrative liberties with the most recent season and reopened very old wounds. It was sad to see Charles and Camilla have to block comments on their social media posts because of criticism over events that happened 30+ years ago.
Prince Andrew continues to be the thorn in the royal family’s side. The arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell ensured that his tied to Epstein were front of mind. While he had the sense to stay out of Beatrice’s released wedding photos and keep a low profile, he also made several sad attempts to float a return to public life via the press. The backlash and pushback from the palace were very clear - he has no current path to return.