Royal style and gossips: gowns and crowns but please no frowns!

[QueenOfTheAndals]

Just in the nick of time! Clothes and light-hearted gossip only please...

Apparently h & m went to the Hubb yesterday obviously no photographers...

Apparently they also went to Buckingham Palace not sure who they were seeing? I guess they could have joined Prince Charles at the investiture today but I'm not sure why.

A collection of Kate's shoes I know she's famous for the nude wedge but she has some great heels too.

Kate's shoes Instagram

Can you double check that she link @itswinetime please? Not working for me.....

Kate's shoes Instagram

Is that better I think it auto added punctuation sorry

Haggisfish that Diana site is a really good potential time waster, thank you 😊 - never seen it before.

Some great old pics though as PPs have said, there’s something quite sad about looking at this innocent, very young girl and knowing how it was all going to turn out.

This page (hope link works) in particular made me jump a bit as they’re visiting the West Country and it talks about PC introducing Diana as ‘my wife, the Duchess of Cornwall’.

princessdianabookboutique.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/9-march-1983-the-prince-and-princess-of-wales-visit-the-ancient-market-town-of-tavistock-in-devon/

Thank you, it works. I am shocked at how many pairs of nude heels she has. How on earth does she decide which pair; they all have minuscule differences!
Although they are all high, I still think her shoes are pretty conservative. There are so many fabulous shoes in the world, with her budget, I would try & be a bit adventurous with my feet!

@Hairydilemma, I haven’t seen any of those pictures before. ( I am going to waste some time later today reading the blog!)
Diana actually looks like a fresh faced school girl. Charles is so much obviously older, it really is quite shocking looking back that such a marriage was considered acceptable.

Precursor of the Cambridge lover's knot Tiara.
The original belonged to Queen Mary's grandmother, and was copied by QM.using spare jewels she received for her wedding!

Gosh, Diana looks so young. I remember the wedding and people at the time saying how young she was, but I was too young myself to realise how incredibly young she actually was.

I remember someone saying to me about Catherine and William split. This may be nonsense. But the theory was that they took her out of the public eye for a while to train her to be a royal. She had a course in what it would mean, how her life would change and taught her how to get in and out of cars, dress in a way that wouldn’t cause the same as her mother in law. Then at the end she was asked if she wanted this life or not.

I have no idea if there is any truth in it, but someone was convinced that what had happened because when she returned and got back with William she seemed more confident and didn’t put a foot wrong.

My dd is almost 20. No way would I encourage her to marry a man so much older who she had seen a handful of times. It’s her family who should have protected her & they threw her to the wolves. I don’t blame the royals for this. Charles had to marry someone. That someone had to be ‘suitable’. Her family should have explained what she was getting into. The same mistakes weren’t made with Sophie.

I'm sure I remember reading an anecdote about that black dress of Diana's years ago... something about Charles saying to the photographers 'Wait 'til you see what's coming next', or words to that effect, when he got out of the car first.

Thrown to the wolves indeed, poor girl.

I also think she was so naive & in love with the idea of being a princess but didn’t really understand what that meant. She’d met Charles 13 times so couldn’t possibly have been in love with him as a person. The idea - yes. I’ll say again her family should have protected her. Her brothers speech at her funeral really annoyed me as he didn’t take any responsibility for his family’s mistakes & laid the blame at the RFs & newspapers door. She wasn’t strong or experiencd or mature enough (at the start) to handle the spotlight.

I know Windy and Curly - she was only 11 years older than me, which I find hard to believe now. At 9 anyone that age is a grown up to you, but looking back she was barely grown up at all and obviously v unworldly wise. Her own family definitely didn’t seem to have her best interests at heart did they?

Agree that to the RF and Charles she probably did seem to be the jolly, uncomplicated schoolgirl type as she was good at putting on that front, and probably seemed a good bet. But her own family knew she was more fragile and should have taken better care.

An aside, I think I’m going to have to change my name. It stemmed from having a hairdresser decision to make but it’s really not glamorous enough for this thread!!

The 10 or more year age gap was quite common in the past. My parents, and my husband’s parents both had more than 10 years difference. It has only been in the last few years that people are questioning it. It wasn’t uncommon 30 or 40 years ago. There is Dick and Angel of French Chateau fame who have a very obvious age gap.

There was also an obvious advantage for some women to marry an older more established man in that they didn’t have to struggle and be poor.

Ipromise cross-posts but agree with you too.

Apparently Kate was at BP recently too. Do you think they were all getting a talking to from the Queen?!

I mean, look at the sort of age gaps between male and female film leads - was it Tina Fey and Amy Poehler who quipped that Gravity was a film in which George Clooney would rather float away into space than spend time with a woman his own age?

I think questions would be asked if a Royal marriage with such a significant gap were to be on the cards, but the 'older man younger woman' dynamic is alive and well in our culture.

I doubt Kate does anything to get a talking to...
To pp; there are etiquette classes, which teach all that Duchess stuff.
Someone I worked with once was sent to.Lucy Clayton as her mother thought she was too.much.of a tomboy.
I.think Kate was more confident because she took time to find out who she was. (Even.is she was in her pajamas mainlining haagen dazs some days; she didn't show it).
William realized he wasn't the great catch he thought he was and came crawling back.to.her.
Both Sophie and Kate in the long run have benefited from long; pre marriage relationships, even if it frustrated them at the time

Yes it was @Spudlet, and of course even in real life Amal is nearly 20 years younger than George.

I don't think that the age gap was really the major problem. We all know that can be fine. She was presented by her family as a robust, healthy, jolly country girl, who would love Balmoral holidays and country events. In fact, I remember the early days, and she genuinely looked thrilled to bits, she was always beaming and giggling. Whatever went wrong, she was definitely happy in the beginning!

There were various photos of Kate tumbling out of nightclubs etc when she and William split up, so I just assumed she was trying to show him what a good time she could have without him. And it worked, he came running back to her!

I think the age gap wouldn't have been a problem if Diana had been 27 and Charles 39. But at 19 and 31 it was a whole different story.

I think that was a big part of the problem Clionba - as many positive have rightly said, they just didn't know one another. She married her handsome prince fantasy, and he married his jolly hockey sticks fantasy - must have been a nasty surprise on both sides when they realised neither of them had what they thought.

But you're right, her young age must have been part of it Queen - how many of us are the same person now we were at 19? Because I look back at 19 year old me and it's like a completely different person to who I am now. Age and life experience can change a person a huge amount at that age.

I think a 19 year old marrying into the RF would raise eyebrows a great deal now because we perceive marriage as something you do a little later in life - I can't think of many people I know who married before their mid-twenties at the earliest.

Yes, I think of all the brides to marry into royalty in the past 20 years Kate was the youngest at 29. I don't know how old Sophie is but I assumed she was mid-thirties at her wedding, as was Meghan.