Kate Middleton was recently praised by the people in the know at British Vogue for wearing a conservative and understated suit on a royal visit to a family-run textile mill in Kent.
Although quick to point out Kate’s alarming habit of late to rock an off-duty wardrobe which leans heavily on “skinny jeans and the occasional Barbour jacket, the fashionistas at Vogue commended Kate’s “return to a trusted favourite for the occasion” and branded it a “grown-up take on uniform dressing.”
Overall, everyone was in their oils to see Middleton’s “penchant for plaid remains.”
The question is, should a mature Kate now stick to understated suits and ditch the yellow dresses she has worn with alarming regularity over the years?
Although the cut of the Duchess’s dresses are always simply divine, sometimes the questionable shade of the outfit, which in some instances can only be described as egg yolk yellow, is absolutely garish.
As one of the most disliked and unflattering colors, yellow is a tricky hue to wear well. In fact, a yellow outfit often wears the wearer and leaves them looking like a rather plump and uncomfortable canary that’s just had their wings clipped.
The color yellow has long been associated with mustard. Which is all well and good, but one would do well to remember that mustard works best as a compliment and a side serving to bring out the succulent flavors in a well-cooked piece of beef. It’s not a main dish in its own right. Sadly, somebody forgot to tell Kate Middleton.
In the past, the shocking visage of the Duchess in yellow at such a high-profile event as Wimbledon was an apocalyptic faux pas. Worringly, the Duchess has opted for this most vile of hues and grotesque of shades on a number of public occasions. Most recently, she was spotted wearing a frightful butter yellow wrap dress at a Royal Garden Party.
In fact, Kate’s late granny-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II was also a fan of the slightly nauseating color.
Admittedly, the Queen was sovereign and one should always allow Her Majesty certain indulgences, but her love of yellow outfits was a bit beyond the pale, even for one so elevated. It’s sad but true, a yellow frock can make anyone from the most high to the most low, look like a lemon on legs.
Obviously, the Queen’s choice of wardrobe has been highly influential on the easily led Duchess of Cambridge.
There was a period when Kate wouldn’t be seen in public at high-profile events without her trademark nude shoes.
Nude shoes have long been the footwear of choice for a well-heeled horse lover wishing to complement their pastel dresses and oversized hats with some identikit nude sledge shoes.
The Queen swore by them, but on a younger filly such as Kate, the nude shoes suggested a distinct lack of awareness on what’s hot to trot and what’s not.
In a 2012 article in Grazia magazine, a columnist suggested, “It occurs to me that not since the eighties, when working-class girls were mocked and satirized for their love of white stilettos in all seasons, has one shoe so defined a class in society. In 2012, quite simply, the nude heel is the white stilly of the middle classes. Only infinitely less fun, and so much less cool than the 80s classic.”
Wearing granny’s shoes is one thing, but a line must be drawn in the sand when it comes to wearing dresses that make one look like an over-ripe banana.
Yellow may be considered the color of happiness, optimism, enlightenment, creativity, sunshine, and spring, but scratch the surface, and this most beastly of colors represents cowardice, betrayal, egoism, and madness.
In Russia, ‘the yellow house” used to be a colloquial expression for an insane asylum.
Yellow is also the color of caution and physical illnesses such as jaundice, malaria, and pestilence.
Now, why would any right thinking fashionista wish to drape themselves in a shade of cloth which has such associations?
For pity’s sake, there’s also a medical term to describe the intense fear of yellow – Xanthophobia.
Even Prince William’s savage criticism of Kate’s Roksanda Ilincic yellow dress, which she was previously seen sporting during her 2014 trip to Australia, was not enough to deter the Duchess from revisiting the nightmare at Wimbledon and other events in the following decade.
If one recalls, Wills said the aforementioned dress made his wife look like a banana. How cruel, but obviously not cruel enough to prevent Kate from making the exact same mistake again.
Let’s hope Kate comes to her senses and ditches the yellow dress for something a little more sophisticated and refined like the understated suit for all her future public engagements.
As Holden Caulfield once said, “It’s no fun to be yellow. What you should be is not yellow at all.”
