Kate Middleton is the Duchess of Normal Style

Sarah Mower


Kate Middleton
Kate Middleton

Yacht races, white water rafting, rugby, cricket, and play-dates. Blazer from Zara and jeans, a Breton-striped T-shirt, a Tory Burch dress, and a nearly two-year-old favorite Jonathan Saunders sweater. As the Duchess of Cambridge's appearances in New Zealand are progressing, it's slowly dawning on us just how determinedly she's foiling the expectations of royal fashion commentators. No gowns are to be walked on this tour, we've learned. Instead, what we're seeing from the Duke and Duchess is a far more outgoing, human picture of family and character than British royal protocol has ever permitted. True: There've been quite sufficient numbers of "public occasion" one-color suits and coats to be going along with (Catherine Walker & Co, Alexander McQueen, Erdem, Emilia Wickstead, so far)-and she surely has a lot more packed for the next two weeks. But they're the predictable. The royally groundbreaking part is how much we're seeing of her in "normal," practical, functional clothes-high street sneakers included. Neatly sidestepping high fashion, the smiling, cheerful Kate Middleton is fast becoming the Duchess of Normcore. (Though ironically-as we know-there's nothing more acutely fashionable than that.)


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Watch the nuances, though. On one level, New Zealand and Australia, both unstuffy ex-British colonial societies, don't adore highfalutin ceremonials, but they do like a good sport. The Duke and Duchess are playing up to that, with exactly the kind of playful, self-deprecating sense of humor that might, just might, cement their future chances of inheriting the titles of King and Queen of those lands. And if not? Well, then there's George: the republican movement's nemesis in nappies.


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There's something else going on, too-the degree to which the down-to-earth Duchess is visibly stretching the limits of royal wifely stereotyping. In New Zealand, she's been seen as a doting mommy, but also a fiercely competitive sportswoman in her own right. (A far cry from what William's mother, Diana, had to content herself with: a sprint in the mother's race on his school sports day.) Meanwhile, at home, Kate's putting her brain to use as well-her qualification in History of Art (a bachelor's from St. Andrews)-as patron of the National Portrait Gallery, and other arts-educational charities. Fair enough. No one's likely to fall back in awe at the idea of a thirty-two-year-old woman being a multifaceted multitasker. Like everything Kate Middleton's projecting through her clothes, that's just normal.

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