Tag: India Hicks

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India Hicks removed the video of Brooke Shields calling Duchess Meghan ‘too precious’

india-hicks-removed-the-video-of-brooke-shields-calling-duchess-meghan-‘too-precious’

Last week, we talked about a bizarre story involving Brooke Shields and the Duchess of Sussex. Brooke and Meghan both appeared at a SXSW panel discussion in March 2024 for International Women’s Day, along with Katie Couric as well. Early in the discussion, Couric asked Meghan about that famous story of when she contacted Procter & Gamble as an eleven-year-old and asked them to change a sexist commercial. Meghan told the story in about a minute and when she was winding down with her point, Brooke “interrupted” Meghan to quip about how when she (Brooke) was eleven, she was playing a prostitute. This is Brooke’s version of what happened, as told to India Hicks this year:

“Katie asks the first question to Meghan and she talks about how at a young age, she was already advocating for women. She starts telling a story about how when she was 11 – and she keeps saying, ‘Well, when I was 11, I saw this commercial and they were talking about how washing dishes was for women. And she said, ‘I didn’t think only women wash dishes. It wasn’t fair. So I wrote to the company.’ She kept saying she was 11! She wrote to the company, they changed the text, they changed the commercial. It was just too precious, and I was like, they’re not going to want to sit here for 45 minutes and listen to anybody be precious or serious.”

I’m including the video at the end of the post yet again – Brooke is really misrepresenting that moment, that’s all I’ll say. Brooke told her version of what happened to India Hicks, the well-connected British woman and granddaughter of King Charles’s mentor Lord Mountbatten. King Charles is also India Hicks’ godfather. I didn’t even know that Hicks had a podcast, and I find it so odd that Hicks would platform Brooke Shields bizarrely calling Meghan “too precious” while misrepresenting the actual moment in the panel discussion. Well, funny story? India Hicks has now removed the video of her interview with Brooke.

India Hicks, goddaughter to King Charles III, has removed a video from her website featuring Hollywood actress Brooke Shields criticising Meghan Markle. The footage, which was prominently displayed on Hicks’s Substack page, showed Shields describing the Duchess of Sussex as “too precious” during a panel discussion.

The deletion comes after both women faced online attacks from Meghan’s supporters. Social media users targeted them with offensive language. The video, from Hicks’s podcast released 10 days ago, had gained international attention. It has now been replaced with a feature about London’s best patisseries.

[From GB News]

I maintain that this whole situation is bizarre. It’s bizarre for India Hicks to platform Brooke entirely, it’s bizarre for Brooke to misrepresent a moment during a 2024 panel discussion, it’s bizarre for India to back down and remove the video. If the goal is to spread toxicity about Meghan, just f–king own it, you know? Just spread your lies and be a shady f–king person. I kind of wonder if it was less about “online attacks from Meghan’s supporters” and more like the king’s goddaughter understanding that she and Brooke both looked like a–holes.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Avalon Red, screencaps from YT.

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India Hicks King Charles III

King Charles didn’t invite Pamela Hicks (Mountbatten’s daughter) to the coronation

king-charles-didn’t-invite-pamela-hicks-(mountbatten’s-daughter)-to-the-coronation

These days, there really is so much drama within a certain class of British society. The grandest dukes, earls, lords, viscounts and noblewomen are extremely pissy right now because King Charles did not invite many of them to his coronation. Keep in mind, I have no skin in this game – I just enjoy watching fancy, entitled aristocrats’ worlds collapse because they weren’t invited to the biggest royal event in seventy years. But even I wonder if Charles should have made these titled toffs a bigger priority for the guest list. Especially when it comes to Lady Pamela Hicks, daughter of Lord Mountbatten, who was Charles’s mentor and de facto godfather/surrogate father. Pamela Hicks was one of QEII’s bridesmaids. Pamela Hicks and her daughter India Hicks are big-time royalists and long-time defenders of Charles. Pamela has spent years saying all kinds of nasty things about Princess Diana. India has made a point of lavishing Princess Kate with praise. And none of that was enough.

Lady Pamela Hicks will not be among the 2,000 guests in Westminster Abbey for King Charles’ coronation. Queen Elizabeth’s bridesmaid and lady-in-waiting turned 94 on Wednesday, and her daughter India Hicks shared her take on the scaled-down guest list for the May 6 crowning ceremony in an Instagram birthday tribute.

India, 55, said they received a message from one of King Charles’ private secretaries, explaining that “this coronation was to be very different to the Queen’s. 8,000 guests would be whittled down to 1,000 alleviating the burden on the state.”

“The King was sending his great love and apologies, he was offending many family and friends with the reduced list,” wrote India, who is a goddaughter of King Charles and served as a bridesmaid at his wedding to Princess Diana in 1981. “My mother was not offended at all. ‘How very, very sensible’ she said. Invitations based on meritocracy not aristocracy. ‘I am going to follow with great interest the events of this new reign,’ ” India continued in the caption.

“Today my mother turns 94 years old, she must be one of the few remaining people with such a memory intact, about to live through a third coronation,” the designer, writer and entrepreneur wrote. “Happy Birthday to my darling Mum.”

[From People]

I’m including the Instagram post below. I looked it up to see if I could tell whether India was seething on her mother’s behalf. I can’t tell, but I’ve always had some difficulty reading between British lines and trying to figure out their obscure class-code. If you told me that India included a few signifiers for her deep displeasure, I would believe you. Is one of them “One of the King’s personal secretaires was passing on a message from the King”? Meaning, India is pointing out that Charles sent one of his many toadies to do his work instead of calling one of his parents’ oldest friends, the daughter of his mentor? Is this also code? “My mother was not offended at all.” It reads as… carefully worded.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instagram.

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India Hicks: Princess Kate ‘wants to not be given things’ & has a ‘strong sense of style’

india-hicks:-princess-kate-‘wants-to-not-be-given-things’-&-has-a-‘strong-sense-of-style’

India Hicks is the kind of royal-adjacent that the Windsors approve of. White, rich, eccentric in a British way, and aristocratic as can be. Hicks is King Charles’s second cousin AND his goddaughter. She is the granddaughter of Lord Mountbatten and daughter of Lady Pamela Hicks (daughter of Lord Mountbatten). Hicks is married to David Flint Wood, they have five children together and they spend most of their time at their home in the Bahamas, although she also maintains a presence and home in England. She was recently profiled by the Telegraph to promote all of her collaborations with British fashion labels, and some of her quotes are rather interesting.

Whether she watches The Crown: I ask if she has seen it and she quickly says no. “We don’t really get Netflix out here.”

She went to QEII’s funeral: “It was extraordinary being there for [Elizabeth II’s] funeral. I was very relieved to find myself in England with my mother during that period. The Queen’s death was a chapter closing for all of us, but for my mother [who was a bridesmaid and lady-in-waiting to the Queen] it was grief on a more personal level. I often wondered how she was and she kept using the word ‘acceptance’.”

On British fashion: “There is a very unpretentious side of British fashion, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously, that I’m such a fan of. There’s also a grittiness that I love. I spent time in Paris after the lockdown – it was wonderful to be there and see that energy but I prefer the style in England.” Gritty, these collections are not – but Hicks explains that she had an urge to work on pieces that were slightly removed from her life in the Bahamas. “Cold-weather dressing is great fun – and I can be drawn into being a little lazy and doing that LA thing where you wear your leggings all day long.”

How her aristocratic roots have influenced her taste: “I definitely shy away from the word ‘class’. Good taste is everything, but in the end it has nothing to do with class. My father came from an ordinary background but he was anything but ordinary. He was a difficult father but a brilliant designer and made me realise good taste and design are by no means dependent on money.”

Whether she’ll give the new Princess of Wales one of her designs: “She wants to not be given things, but maybe. She really is an extraordinary woman and has now developed a very strong sense of style which goes hand-in-hand with the work she is doing. She has found the balance, her style doesn’t overtake or overpower her or her causes – and you don’t necessarily remember all the individual pieces, but instead have the impression of something very beautiful.”

[From The Telegraph]

“Good taste is everything, but in the end it has nothing to do with class…good taste and design are by no means dependent on money…” Sure, but money helps buy all of those tasteful, classy things. We’ve made it so the most tasteful and luxurious things are more expensive, so that “tasteful” carries a cachet of being solely for the wealthy. As for what Hicks says about Kate the button princess, I find those comments to be kind of underhanded? “You don’t necessarily remember all the individual pieces, but instead have the impression of something very beautiful…” As in, Kate is unmemorable, the things she wears are unmemorable, and we’re only seeing her in her boring, unmemorable “work clothes” anyway. Once again, I’m reminded of the fact that the truly aristocratic women don’t think much of Kate beyond “she’s not disagreeable” and “she’s unmemorable.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.