The Princess of Wales looked fittingly regal in a rich royal blue as she celebrated Christmas Day at Sandringham with the extended Windsor family yesterday.
Holding daughter Charlotte’s hand on the walk to the annual Christmas Day service at St Mary Magdalene Church, Kate’s key piece was a long Alexander McQueen coat with fabulously structured shoulders and a nipped-in waist. Unfussy, stylish, elegant… We’ve come to expect nothing less.
She teamed this with a roll-neck navy jumper, £1,180 customised ‘Glen 85’ suede knee-high boots from Gianvito Rossi and a bespoke matching royal blue headpiece. The dramatic felt pillbox style hat, designed by London-based milliner Juliette Botterill, was adorned with an elegant, stylised bow and crossed quill embellishment.
The look was completed with her linked sapphire drop with diamond surround earrings from her late mother-in-law Princess Diana’s jewellery collection.
It was the queen of tonal dressing at her best.
Elegance: The Princess of Wales and Princess Charlotte, eight, at Sandringham yesterday
In step: King and Queen Camilla. Below: Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh in feathered fedora
Kate, who is known to wear the same clothes in several colours, also owns a green version of this gorgeous Alexander McQueen coat and a black version of the hat, which she wore to Welsh Guard’s St David’s Day Parade in March this year.
Kate’s been nailing the formal Christmas dress code since she first joined the family at Sandringham in 2011, the same year she married Prince William at Westminster Abbey. On that first occasion she wore a maroon coat dress and a matching hat by Jane Corbett.
In the 12 years since, this formula of a tailored coat with a matching headpiece has been refined and repeated and this might be the strongest iteration yet.
Her family coordinated their outfits this year. The future King and his eldest son, ten-year-old George, were also in blue, while eight-year-old Princess Charlotte wore a fern-green double-breasted coat with velvet collar – similar to the shade her mother wore last year – with navy blue tights and matching flats.
Meanwhile, little Prince Louis, five, tied the family together with the most festive outfit of all – a navy pea coat over green and blue tartan trousers, £60 from Trotters – a change from his usual shorts and knee socks.
He adorably clutched the hand of his older cousin Mia Tindall, nine, also on her way to the service with her parents, Zara and Mike Tindall and sister Lena, five.
The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh attending the Christmas Day morning church service at St Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, Norfolk
The Prince and Princess of Wales weren’t the only ones coordinating. The King and Queen wore complementing colours with Camilla in an Anna Valentine beige longline coat we’ve seen many times before. She wore a blue silk paisley dress, accessorised with beige boots and a Philip Treacy hat with feather detail. The King mirrored her with a classic camel overcoat.
Ever elegant Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh was seen in coat dress by Claire Mischevani, a British designer who has become a firm favourite among the royals.
Sophie’s tweed piece was adapted from a khaki crepe design – also with bow detail neckline – available online for £1,145. A fabulously festive choice topped off with a £95 Hicks & Brown fedora.
For the second year in a row, Andrew, the disgraced Duke of York, walked to church with the family. His ex-wife, Sarah, Duchess of York joined him in public at Sandringham for the first time in years. She walked beside her ex-husband in Holland Cooper’s Dowdeswell coat, £799, in emerald green, a traditional choice for the Sandringham service, teamed with ankle boots and a coordinating bejewelled clutch.