Princess Kate wears cheap jewelry because of the ‘cost of living crisis,’ okay??

You guys, the Princess of Wales had to break away from her summer holiday to bark orders at Kensington Palace staff and some friendly royal reporters. Kate and Carole must have been highly upset over Suzy Menkes comments this week about Kate’s lack of joy in wearing major Royal Collection jewelry. Menkes was obviously Team Camilla, and the whole thing read like Camilla flaunting the fact that she gets to decide what Royal Collection pieces Kate gets to borrow. But I also thought there was a grain of truth to Menkes’ words, in that Kate doesn’t know how to accessorize or wear the right jewelry for the right event with the right ensemble. Kate never learned, Carole never learned and so Kate still wears jewelry like a middle-class university student who never inherited any heirloom pieces (which is only biting commentary if you’re a British aristocrat, which is what Kate is trying to emulate). Anyway, Kate must have been really upset about Menkes’ comments, because this Telegraph piece was organized swiftly. It’s basically a long-winded commentary piece about how it’s great that Kate wears cheap jewelry and can’t accessorize her way out of a paper bag because… reasons! Some highlights:

Kate’s jewelry strategy: On many occasions we’ve seen the Princess enjoy wearing the kind of costume jewellery pieces that the rest of us might buy on the high street…Some of the reasons for this preference for costume jewellery are obvious: we’re in the midst of a cost of living crisis; it would read a bit brash to wear a £300,000 pair of diamond earrings to visit a hospice or a baby bank. And in wearing jewellery that – while not always “cheap” – is more accessible to the likes of you and I, she appears more relatable.

Kate wears jewelry like any other British woman: The Princess wears jewellery in the same way most other British women do, says Marisa Hordern, founder and CEO of Missoma, one of the Princess’s go-to jewellery brands. The most important factors are comfort and confidence. “Whether it’s fine, demi-fine or costume jewellery, what you wear reflects how you feel and what you want to project – and the Princess of Wales shows us time and time again how to wear all three seamlessly and effortlessly.”

Jewelry provenance is only tricky when you’re Black! There could be a more sensitive issue at play. The provenance of jewellery can be a thorny issue for royals – as we saw when the Duchess of Sussex wore a pair of diamond earrings during the Royal Tour of New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga in 2018. Palace aides initially claimed that the earrings were “borrowed”, but it later emerged that they were a gift from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who is accused of ordering the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Ethical questions aside, gifts from other heads of state remain the property of the Crown, not the recipient….Kate and her longtime assistant-stylist Natasha Archer are likely being very careful that she doesn’t wear jewellery that might raise awkward questions.

An awkward way to say Kate doesn’t have access to most jewelry: So who gets to wear the royal jewels? It’s not as simple as rifling through the vaults and picking your favourites. The Crown owns most of them, and pieces are loaned out to other royals with the permission of the monarch. This can be on a long-term or lifetime basis, with the piece returned to the Crown on their death. There is a lot of tact that goes into the decisions about who wears what, too. The Princess of Wales often wears pieces which were worn and loved by Princess Diana, but it would be inappropriate for the Queen to do so. Instead, she often chooses pieces that were worn by the Queen Mother.

Lack of occasion: The biggest hurdle for Kate and the Queen in wearing these royal jewels is the lack of occasion, which has steadily been declining since the Second World War. Lauren Kiehna, the writer and historian behind The Court Jeweller blog, recognises this, too. “There are fewer opportunities for that kind of grandeur,” she says. “There’s a need to match attire to the occasion, and Kate seems to wear more affordable jewellery pieces, often from local or sustainable brands, when the moment calls for more accessibility. Both Camilla and Kate have started delving more into the vaults since the late Queen’s passing, and I expect that we’ll see more important pieces making appearances on both of them in time. But, sadly, the days of wearing important antique jewels on a daily basis appear to be over.”

Kate is keen to build her own collection: “Catherine has a very sensitive and modern approach to jewellery,” says Bethan Holt, author of The Duchess of Cambridge: A Decade of Modern Royal Style, and The Telegraph’s fashion director. “I think that she’s wanting to carve her own path within the Royal family. Although there are some incredible pieces within the Royal family vaults, I think she’s been very keen to build her own collection, using pieces from the high street and pieces from modern jewellers like Kiki McDonough as well… Which I believe often have been given to her by Prince William to mark special occasions.”

[From The Telegraph]

Do you want me to get into it? I will. The “lack of occasion” argument bugs me, because there have been plenty of occasions where it would have been entirely reasonable for Kate to borrow a tiara or a big necklace or major earrings and she just hasn’t or she was blocked from doing so. The coronation is the most obvious example – you can argue “the cost of living crisis” until you’re blue in the face, but Kate still chose to get those fruity custom headpieces made at great expense rather than simply borrowing a tiara for free. That’s the rub, though – Charles and Camilla didn’t want Kate to wear a tiara, because Cam was the one who had to shine (spoiler: she did not). The BAFTAs were another example of Kate not understanding that she should have worn something more special to a big event – she wore those cheap, tacky earrings and she made it seem like she thought the BAFTAs were a cheap costume party. She looked unserious and juvenile at the British film industry’s biggest event of the year.

In general, I think it’s fine that Kate wears inexpensive pieces for daily wear, for day events to Windsor baby banks or what have you. Like, no one is arguing that she should be dripping in diamonds to visit a food bank. But no one wants to acknowledge Kate’s tackiness and her inability to understand when, where and how to wear important pieces.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.