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Duchess of Cambridge, Duke of Cambridge, Fashion, Irish Guards, Jewelry, Kate Middleton, New Coat, Prince William, Shamrock, St. Patrick's Day
Kate Middleton and Prince William performed their first joint appearance of the year today (March 17) when they visited the Irish Guards for St. Patrick’s Day. William was there as Colonel of the regiment and Kate handed out shamrocks. The Irish Guards were created in 1900 by Queen Victoria.
In 2012 and 2013, Kate wore the exact same Emilia Wickstead coatdress to this event. She did style the years differently, which is good (she doesn’t always restyle when re-wearing clothes). To be honest, I love that green coat she wore; it is one of my favorites from her. Now, I was curious to see if she would re-wear that coat again, but she opted for something new—a different green coat that looks very similar to the other one. The coat is a pine green Hobbs Persephone trench. Not going to lie, I love this coat, too. I would totally buy this coat if I had $345 dollars to spend. What I don’t love is that instead of going with the self belt that came with the coat, Kate opted for a horrid green (that looks black to me against the green of the coat), textured belt with a gold buckle. It’s ugly. I don’t understand Kate’s need to cinch in her waist with ugly belts. I realize that Kate has to prove how skinny she is by cinching in her clothes, but wear a prettier belt.
As far as accessories go, Kate wore a green Gina Foster hat that she previously wore to church on Christmas. Kate wore a new pair of Emmy shoes in green. She’s worn Emmy shoes before, the Valerie pump in chocolate and grey (the chocolate is listed on their website as £400, I would assume the green ones are similar in price). Kate carried a new clutch, also in a shade of green. It’s this Emmy bag, but in a different color.
Let’s talk jewelry. Kate wore a gold Cartier shamrock brooch from the Royal Collection that was first worn by Queen Alexandra (wife of King Edward VII) in 1901. It’s a beautiful brooch. I’m not that into brooches, but I really like this one. This is not the first time Kate has worn this brooch, she wore it to this event in 2012 and 2013, and she also wore it at an Irish Guards Armed Forces Day event in 2011. Kate wore green amethyst earrings by Kiki McDonough. The earrings are relatively new, their first appearance was when she wore them to the ICAP Art Room appearance in February. She wore a Tissot watch, which I’ve been informed is quite old, she’s had it for years.
All the articles mention how Will and Kate look so tan and whatnot having just come back from their Maldives holiday. I understand the want and need to include the holiday (and I’m glad they keep bringing it up), but is it just me or do Will and Kate not look any tanner than normal? I don’t see any difference in her skin tone from this year and the previous years. If they went to get a tan, then they failed.
Let’s talk quotes: We learned something about Will and Kate’s baby planning. William was asked about babies and when they’ll have #2 by one of the officers and William replied, “Maybe one day. One’s enough at the moment.” Hm… I don’t know. I could see them not wanting to have another one right away, seeing as George has reportedly been a very fussy baby. I think they weren’t expecting that and have become disillusioned with the idea of parenthood, so I would understand them not wanting a second one right away. But then I think Kate would want a pregnancy and newborn to further excuse her from royal duties. I guess we’ll see.
Check out this video from the Daily Mail. I’d embed the video if I could, but for whatever reason their code doesn’t work for me. Toward the beginning of the video, Kate is talking to an officer and William says something in Kate’s ear, Kate laughs and then stops talking to the officer. My only guess is that Kate was talking too long and William was all, “Hurry it up.”
Links: Express article. Mirror article. Daily Mail article. ITV videos. Popsugar article and photos.
Photo from British Army twitter.
Special thanks to Anna for helping with the jewelry and bag ID confirmation, and belt color ID.
Kate Middleton Review 
Many thanks for your post.I love reading your page. I agree with your comments the coat dress looks lovely on the Duchess, but I am not a fan of the belt either. Yes the Duchess does seem to cinch most of her coats you see her wear in at the waist, not necessary the coat has a natural fall of its own. I would like to see the Duchess more proactive and get out and about and start to make a difference. There are people out there really doing it tough, visits to hospitals, sick children, the mentally ill just an example. I believe she has the capabilities and obviously the resources to make a difference. So far it has been very disappointing effort. She has had many years to prepare for her role as wife to the future king. Yes there is a royal tour coming up and she has a baby, but alot of time has been wasted, respect needs to be earned. She has advisers/aids to do a lot of the ground work for her. Just take a look at Princess Mary of Denmark, she is outstanding. A mother of 4 children, she has been diligent and quietly working at making a difference since day one. She is one princess that make her country proud. Whoever is advising the Duchess if anyone, needs to rethink there strategy, the sooner the better.
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Yay, someone else likes the coat 🙂 The coat is so much cuter without the belt, though.
CP Mary, CP Victoria, and others are all very dedicated. They take care of their children and still find the time to be out there doing good works for their community. They take nice vacations, too, but theirs are forgiven because they work so hard in between vacations. What Kate and William don’t realize is that if they worked harder between vacations, the vacations would be forgiven more. No many people criticize the Queen for taking a vacation (though granted hers are to Balmoral and Sandringham and not some expensive foreign island) because she does so much when not on vacation.
To be fair, though, I kind of have to point out that the European CPs are the 2nd in line or wife to the 2nd in line, while Kate is wife to the 3rd in line. Kate would naturally not be doing as much work as those ladies. However, I do think Kate needs to step it up. She is a senior royal and has been married three years, she needs to up her workload, no more excuses.
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what about princess charlene they got married at the same time as kate, and she has been working soo hard often travelling alone for engagements but she never dissapoints and she is soo elegant, so for how long will they continue to babysit this duchess, its getting tedious just to watch how awful her work ethics is!
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Charlene even has her own charity she started to help young people learn to swim and prevent drowning. There’s an article in Vanity Fair Italia where she talks about her charity (as well as other things). The article is in Italian, obviously, and I used the translation feature built into Chrome to read it, but the translation isn’t that great. But the gist is there. http://www.vanityfair.it/people/mondo/14/03/13/charlene-di-monaco-intervista-alberto-di-monaco-foto
Now, moving onto how Kate compares, I can’t believe I’m about to defend Waity, but here it goes: To be fair, Charlene is the wife of the Sovereign, while Kate is wife to the 3rd in line, which means Charlene’s workload would naturally be heavier than Kate’s. This does not excuse Kate from doing her royal duties, which need to be stepped up pronto, but it might be a bit unfair to compare Kate’s workload to Charlene’s.
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Thanks for the information about the belt. The day should have been about the Irish Guards and the Shamrock tradition but all I could think about was that belt! It just looks SO wrong. Does Kate have no idea as to styling an outfit? (This coat + ugly belt combo proves she does NOT). Why can she not learn and take some advice? The “Joker” stiff grin she is wearing in some of the Daily Mail photos makes it seem that she didn’t want to be there – still wanted to be on holiday?
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LOL, some of her expressions really make her seem manic. I almost have to wonder if there is something wrong with her. She doesn’t seem to be able to be normal when doing an appearance, she has to pull her face so much. Maybe she’s really insecure with the public appearances and interacting and forces the manic grins and expressions to compensate. If so, William really should hire someone to couch her.
Re the belt: gah, I hate that thing. And it’s not like she doesn’t have prettier belts, she belted her 2012 dress and it wasn’t so glaringly in your face as this one.
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What I find most grating about this scenario is Billy-boy strutting around in a fancy uniform he did nothing to earn. What did he ever do to become a colonel in this regiment, except be born? That waste of space couldn’t make it as a plain old pilot, in spite of being given every advantage…again simply for being born. We can debate about Waity till the cows come home, but the entire I-am-royal-therefore-I-am-inherently-better mindset is to blame for this completely dysfunctional family and this new generation of sponges.
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Yeah, all William did was be born the first son of the heir to the Queen of England. He was handed the title Colonel of the Irish Guards by the Queen. A title he did nothing to deserve.
Re his piloting: He didn’t even deserve to be a pilot. He wears glasses, which means if he were anyone else he would not have even been allowed to take flying lessons let alone be a pilot in the army piloting rescue missions. Wearing corrective lenses is a disqualification for anyone else, but they couldn’t not let him go for the pilot gig because he’s the heir and it would have caused a huge ruckus.
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so if waity is allowed to have a light work load being wife of third to heir then explain why sophie of wessex being a mother of two is among the most hardworkng in the RF, and her husband is not heir to anything! Secondly, waity dissapointment comes even on those few engagements she does, her dresses are not appropriate for a woman in her positon (skirts flying up) how can a woman in such a high profiled position ALLOW THIS MESS to happen! Wearing very short skirts, is trashy looking, her speeches are a joke, so basically, she has very very poor work ethics if u compare her with other women in high profiled position, and beneath that green coat was a short dress AGAIN!!!!!
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Adam, I both agree and disagree with you. I agree that Kate is a mess, but I don’t necessarily think comparing her engagement numbers to others is the way to go. This is a long post, sorry. Hopefully it clarifies things. Please hear (or read) me out.
Firstly, I love Sophie, but she is not the most hardworking British royal. The two royals who do the most work are Charles (537 in 2013) and Anne (454).
Secondly, I would never expect Kate, or William for that matter, to do as many engagements as Charles or Camilla (who herself needs to step up her workload, she only did 246 engagements last year compared to Sophie’s 228). Also, Charles and Anne and the other older royals have been working for decades and have more charities and duties they have collected over time than either Kate or William. Kate doesn’t have a ton of charities she’s patron of.
Now as far as the other CPs and Charlene go, I did not actually know how many engagements they performed in a year when I originally posted my comment earlier. I assumed they did far more engagements than Kate, but it turns out at least CP Victoria doesn’t (hers were only just over double what Kate did, which isn’t saying much since Kate’s were so low, and Kate did more in 2012 [111] than Victoria did in 2013 [98]). I looked at the Swedish wedsite’s calendar and went through by hand and added up how many engagements everyone did in 2013 (which took a ridiculous amount of time, lol). I checked the websites of the Denmark and Monaco royal houses and neither of them have calendars or court circulars so I don’t have numbers for them at all, sorry.
Now, I would actually say it is not fair at all to compare at least the Swedish Royal Family to the British Royal Family in terms of engagement numbers. King Carl Gustaf did 245 engagements in 2013, a good 100 engagements fewer than QEII (344). For this reason I would argue that the Swedish Royal house doesn’t do as many engagements as the Brits in general. Let’s look at the other Swedish royals: Queen Silvia did 167; CP Victoria did 98; P Daniel did 100; P Carl Philip did 61; P Madeleine did 26 (granted she has a full time job in NY). All are fewer than the Brits. So maybe it’s not actually right to compare the two houses.
I don’t know how many engagements CP Mary or P Charlene do, but if it’s on par with the Swedes then it is unfair to compare them to the Brits as well. If anyone has numbers for the Danes or Monaco or other Royal houses, I’d love to take a look at them and revise my statement.
Let’s get back to Kate. Like I said, none of this excuses Kate from doing royal duties and she *should* be stepping up her game. Because she has so few patronages, I think she should spend more time with each. I do think Kate should up her duties to at least 150 a year (150/year would be about 3 a week), but I don’t think any of us should be expecting Kate or William (or Harry) to be doing numbers on par with Charles or Anne. Even if Kate and William (and Harry) are not full time working royals, they should still be well over 100 a year each, and they’re not (William did 62 last year, Harry did 52 but he spent 4 months in Afghanistan). I do think they need to up their game and stop making excuses as to why they don’t do more duties, but I don’t think it’s at all accurate to expect them to reach Charles or Anne or even Queen (344) numbers (yet).
Thirdly, I totally agree with you, Kate is a freaking mess. She is always doing something stupid or against protocol at every engagement she does. Given how few engagements Kate actually does, she should be perfection. She has all the time in the world to prep for each engagement, but she doesn’t give enough shits to prepare. Her speeches are not even long enough to be called proper speeches and yet she must look down every other word. It’s ridiculous.
I am not giving Kate a pass. At all. She needs to improve how she conducts herself when performing royal duties, and she needs to up her workload. 44 engagements last year is laughable (I don’t care that she was pregnant; pregnancy is not a disability). I would say Kate needs to pull out at least 150 a year (and that’s as a “part time” working royal, when she goes full time she should be well over that).
Fourthly, I agree with you, Kate is a huge disappointment. She needs to get her act together and be presentable when in public (and stop breaking protocol, and flashing everyone). She needs to up her workload and show some work ethic because she hasn’t yet. She needs to actually show she gives a damn about the charities she supports, because the only things she has shown an interest in are shopping and vacations. She needs to show some charisma and be personable.
The only thing you and I disagree on is that I don’t think we should be comparing her to the other European royals. I originally thought this because I assumed the others did far more given their higher status. But having reviewed the Swedish numbers, I now think this because the Swedes don’t do as many engagements as the Brits in general and Kate should be doing *more* than CP Victoria. However, I would not expect Kate to do as many or more than other British Royals, at the moment (because she’s still part time**). When she goes full time, she should definitely be doing more than Sophie***, as more is expected from Kate.
**We could debate whether Kate’s part time status is deserved, if you want. I think their part time status is BS and they should go full time because their part time status is a crutch and excuse not to do more royal duties.
***And would be doing more than Camilla if she doesn’t step up her game. Until Camilla is doing more than 300 engagements a year, I doubt the Cambridges will do that many. The Palace won’t let them. They don’t want Camilla to be outshined by lesser, younger royals. Camilla needs to step it up.
PS. Yeah, it was a good thing she wore that long coat because that dress under there was super short.
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we have to disagree to agree, am still not convinced (so is a lot of people) of a woman who dated the prince for years has been married for THREEEEEEEEEEE years is still behaving like shes an infant, she cant work because???????? Its embarrasing to see the queen working soo hard because the cambs still need to tan themselves on different islands around the world!.
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I don’t think we’re disagreeing on that issue. I totally agree that Kate is a moron who doesn’t take her role seriously (after she waited on her back for ten years to get it). There is no excuse for her moronic behavior and lack of work. She has been married for almost three years, which means she should be seasoned and performing engagements with easy, but she doesn’t. It also means she should be doing a whole host of engagements, rather than a handful. If Kate had been doing engagements regularly this whole time she would be great at it by now, but she refused and is still terrible. If she has advisers, she’s not listening to them. That’s not something I disagree with. It’s very much something I agree with, or else I wouldn’t have started this blog.
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