Kate Middleton Once Made An Inappropriate Fashion Faux Pas That Even William Called Out

Royal marriages are often sold as storybook romances. From the outside, Prince William and Kate Middleton may look like they're living a real-life fairy tale — all castles and kingdoms. But every so often, a detail escapes, hinting at something more brittle beneath the PR-lacquered surface. Behind palace doors, there are strange things about their marriage we just can't ignore. One such example was described in "Yes Ma'am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants," when royal journalist Tom Quinn recounted an awkward episode that exposed fault lines behind palace walls.

In the book, an aide recalled an early blunder that triggered William's disapproval. "Before Kate realised that as a senior royal you have to dress carefully, having taken advice, she once bought an outfit that William considered appropriate," they revealed. "He told Kate she looked as if in order to dress she'd just run through a charity shop covered in superglue." The comment seemed to double as a classist swipe. In mocking the idea of charity shops, he dismissed a space many turn to for survival. With accessible pricing and sustainable options, they are essential for families navigating the cost-of-living crisis and those wanting to do their bit for the environment. But William — cushioned with modern pressures and tethered to the entitlement of the royal family — has never had to navigate this in any meaningful way.

The incident also proves how quickly the boundaries of acceptability were drawn. Before the shift to tailored coats and diplomatic hemlines, she occasionally took risks. The outfit itself was never revealed, though it's tempting to imagine it among the risqué outfits Kate Middleton could never wear as a working royal, or shelved alongside her pre-royal looks we can't stop thinking about.

For all Prince William's gibes, Kate Middleton's style has since evolved into one of the monarchy's most effective soft-power tools. According to Brand Finance's British Luxury survey, when Kate wears an item — be it a designer coat or high-street piece — desirability among U.S. shoppers rises by nearly 40%. But the refinement has come at a cost; the very control that's helped her define her public image has also, arguably, flattened it. Increasingly, her wardrobe choices have grown cautious, bordering on dull — no doubt part of a broader effort to avoid royal family outfits that were beyond controversial. It's a long way from the Kate Middleton fashion mishaps that stunned royal fans.

Still, style politics play out behind the scenes. When Kate's longtime stylist Natasha Archer made her private Instagram public, eagle-eyed observers took note of who she'd been following. Among the accounts were Meghan Markle's close friends, her make-up artist, and her colorist. All of this might have been shrugged off as mere coincidence if not for one detail: Archer also followed "What Meghan Wore," a fan blog cataloguing Meghan's outfits.

Many royal watchers had already clocked a noticeable refinement in Kate Middleton's wardrobe in response to Meghan joining the fold. When Archer's Instagram activity came to light, it seemed only to add credibility to that theory. This also throws their well-documented tensions into sharper relief. Reports of Kate's hostility towards Meghan are widely known (most notoriously, the incident in which Kate reduced Meghan to tears ahead of the 2018 royal wedding). If Kate was attempting to absorb Meghan's aesthetic all along, was her animosity rooted in jealousy all along? The evidence, increasingly, suggests as much.