It was only a matter of time before Meghan’s choices began attracting press attention. Although she was so beautifully presented that practically everything she wore looked wonderful on her, and anything that wasn’t couture sold out so rapidly that the Meghan Effect became a phenomenon, she was nevertheless building up a bank of hostility which seemed counter to her efforts. She so obviously cared about looking as good and as glamorous as she could that it was inconceivable she would deliberately seek to bring criticism down on her head. Yet some of her choices so flagrantly breached the rules of what constitutes acceptable attire for women of rank that she either had bad advice or refused to take any at all. For instance, her tendency to wear cocktail attire during the day meant that she was either ignorant of what was acceptable attire in certain situations and at certain times for a woman of her station, or then she cared more for looking good than she did for dressing with appropriate respect for the customs of her adopted land, and was thumbing her nose at British customs at the very moment she wanted everyone’s approbation for her beautiful she looked.
There were one or two examples which demonstrate the mistake she was making. On one of the few occasions upon which she wore a multi-coloured print on a cream background rather than her inevitable black or grey, the dress was made from a transparent material lined on the body but with sheer long sleeves and a square neckline front and back which was so scooped that there was barely an inch between the bodice and the sleeve. In one fell swoop, she had breached two dictats: 1) you do not wear transparent sleeves during the day except with formal morning wear; they are cocktail wear, to be worn only after sundown, and 2) you do not wear necklines that are so scooped out during the day, unless the fabric of the garment is clearly daytime attire, such as opaque cotton.
Worse was to follow when Meghan joined the Royal Family for her first appearance on the balcony at Buckingham Palace following the Trooping The Colour ceremony at Horse Guards Parade in 2018. Although she wore a beautiful pale pink Carolina Herrera dress with huge covered buttons that screamed couture, it sported an off-the-shoulder neckline as if the dress code had been cocktail or evening attire, not formal day wear. She complemented the dress with a fetching Philip Treacy hat of the same colour, though her choice of handbag was also unorthodox: a white Carolina Herrera clutch bordered in gold metal. One does not wear gold accessories in the day. They are regarded as vulgar and inelegant, or what the interior designer Nicky Haslam would dismiss as ‘common’.
A month later Meghan was back in cocktail wear during the day on the Buckingham Palace balcony, wearing yet another couture dress by yet another foreign designer. Yet again the dress, by Dior, was beautiful, but once more it was, in British terms, inappropriate for the occasion. It was of black silk with a bateau neckline: a style that is only ever worn after dark or with informal attire such as beachwear, except for wedding dresses. Her hat was another stylish concoction, mercifully by another British milliner, this time Stephen Jones. But again her handbag was an evening bag: now a black silk clutch that was luckily more discreet than the gold metal chosen the month before.
To the sartorially knowledgeable, what made this faux pas even more undesirable was that Meghan had chosen to attend church in cocktail wear. The occasion was celebrating the centenary of the founding of the Royal Air Force on the 1st April 1918. It had started off with a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral commemorating the many members of the RAF who had endangered or sacrificed their lives for the nation. Princes Harry and William being helicopter pilots, the event had personal significance for them. Following the service, there was a flypast of 100 aircraft over Buckingham Palace. The Royal Family watched it from the balcony, Meghan enjoying pride of place immediately beside the Queen.
One princess said, ‘I only hope the press doesn’t notice her breaches of the dress code. We don’t want them criticising her. I gather she is extremely sensitive to criticism. In fact, she requires constant adulation. Presumably that’s why Harry keeps his mouth shut.’ I could not help pointing out that Harry might well have remained silent through ignorance, for prior to Meghan’s arrival in his life, he had invariably looked unkempt. Fashion was clearly not his forte.
Unfortunately, Meghan’s inappropriate attire was not the only thing exciting comment. The cognoscenti also noticed that she had no idea what constituted good British form when greeting strangers. Again, it was hoped that the press would not pick up on her approach. Whenever she was greeting strangers, she would inform them how pleased she was to meet them. For a plethora of good reasons, the standard greeting has always been, ‘How do you do?’ Firstly, it is friendly and neutral while covering a multitude of possibilities without opening you up to criticism. While that might seem reserved to those of a more effusive nature, the reason why it has always been standard is simple. You cannot know that you are pleased to meet people until you have met them. You are therefore laying claim to a sentiment you do not yet possess if you tell them how pleased you are. This is at best insincerity and is tantamount to hypocrisy, as in the original meaning of the word, which is lack of critical faculty. Avoiding insincere and hypocritical conduct is a matter of principle as well as policy, for a) insincerity is a mark of bad character and b) hypocrisy
