One of the Duchess of Cambridge’s few patronages is her “work” with the Natural History Museum. That along with her patronage of the National Portrait Gallery ensures that she’ll get invited to a big gala or gallery event once or twice a year and get to call it “work.” So it was on Tuesday, when Kate came out to the Natural History Museum for a day-event celebrating “Dippy,” the museum’s “famous Diplodocus.” Dippy is leaving the museum to go on tour, so Kate got together with some kids to “say farewell,” eat some cake and paint dinosaur eggs. It was actually a cute event, and Kate kept the manic-smiling to a minimum as she interacted with the kids.
For the event, Kate wore a dress by LK Bennett, the same label that makes Kate’s much beloved and much-worn nude pumps. The is the “Cersei” dress, which… Kate is NOT a Cersei. She is, at best, a wannabe Margaery Tyrell, but I think even that is too generous. Now, Carole Middleton? Wannabe Cersei. I think Prince Harry might be Daenerys. William is absolutely Joffrey. Where was I? Oh, the dress. The Cersei dress. It seems odd to name this wispy, boho-vibe dress after such a bad-ass character like Cersei. It feels like The Cersei Dress should be made of gold and vengeance. With a high collar. This dress costs £375. While that’s not the craziest price tag in the world, realistically it does seem overpriced.
After her trip to the museum, Kate attended an awards ceremony for Place2Be, which is another one of her patronages. For that event, Kate changed into a black Preen dress. She wore the red version of this same dress in Canada, remember? She actually changed up her shoe game too – these black heels are Prada.
Photos courtesy of Pacific Coast News.
This is not a Cersei dress. A Cersei dress would radiate power. This dress does not. It makes me want to knit a scarf or go shopping with my grandmother
Bingo, I scrolled through and I looked for the dress at least 4 times…… it is not there! Looks like that itchy blanket that my grandmother used to pull up to my neck when I slept over in the winter. It might smell of mothballs as well…. OK I’m scratching. The other one looks like something my 5yr old has….. given to her by her Nana of course. Lol
Ouch. Why the snark towards knitting? A lot of knitters these days are young and knitting some really attractive patterns.
I don’t understand how someone can spend so much money on clothes and yet look soooo dowdy. And her hair in the second outfit! Omg! That is exactly how I wore my hair when I was in junior high–in the 1980’s–somehow she manages to style her hair simultaneously too young AND out-of-date.
Lol, yeah the first thing I thought when I saw that second hairdo was how juvenile it looked. Not something a thirty something future queen should be wearing.
Snazzy, you are so right about how clothes can radiate power. The black dress Cersei wore after she torched Kings Landing was *the* baddest ‘power suit’ I’ve seen on a female TV character. She was full-on dictator with a whole lot of chic.
While many people are in an uproar over the cost of BP Kate wears two new dresses, pairs of shoes and a belt that cost over a GRAND!! Completely clueless or just doesn’t care?!
Doesn’t care. Doesn’t even realise.
Well, if she repeats outfits or wears inexpensive clothing, they call her the Discount Duchess. Can’t win either way.
Far better to be known as the Discount Duchess than Spendthrift Kate.
She is the one who makes it about the clothes, but constantly showing up in new outfits. If she purchased a low-cost, working wardrobe people would focus on the work.
As she is still doing almost no work, however, the attention on clothes distracts the masses from the work shy truth.
The problem is that Kate can make any dress look cheap and un-stylish. It doesn’t matter how much she spends her clothes do always wear her and her clothes are the only thing that have a message and not a good one.
Makes her husband’s comments about materialism sound even more out of touch. Why should a belt cost $1000. Or is. £1000? Either way it is wasteful.
Two outings in one day?
She’s probably spending today on a fit of the vapours with the sheer exhaustion of it all.
The first event was embargoed, Sixer. Dippy apparently refused to meet the press without his girlfriend Trexie and the museum said no. Too much disruption to the patrons and children and Trexie would have scared Kate. Or at least that’s how I think it went down.
Ha. You are getting good at these Royal stories, m’dear.
Her posture in the last picture is killing me. Why is she always hunched over like that? Is it insecurity? Nervousness? Spinal problems?
Her favorite movie is The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
I’m gonna start referring to her as the Duchess of Hunchback
Hunchback. Charlotte Casigrahi has a similar spinal issue too.
It’s such a shame that these beautiful, young women ruin the lines of their very expensive outfits with their horrible posture, not to mention how their spines are going to look in 20 years.
She looks like a turtle.
Not spine problems because her posture is much better when she’s dressed for sport. Flat shoes, no clutch and her love of sports are why I think her posture is better during sporty appearances.
Her love of flirting with Sir Ben probably explains it too! lol
The damn crotch clutching certainly isn’t helping her posture either.
She looks like a pathetic bullied schoolgirl, creeping about to avoid attention.
HANDS AT SIDES, FHS! The Queen Mother is spinning in her grave seeing her poor posture too.
It’s time to cut up the black Amex. Why does she need a new dress for every occasion? And $1,000 for a BELT!?? Ridiculous!
Her posture is just making my back hurt. (Thanks Yolanda) And the crotch-clutching is making me ragey. Sorry, more coffee needed…..
I have noticed that she wears a cheaper dress or repeat when she want to show off or hide expensive accessories such as the bland belt. Katie loves to show off how she’s made it into high society with the designer clothes etc…
I think you are right.
I just wonder about one thing: did Kate really make it into high society or does she just love to pretend she made it?
I find it suspicious that Kate is never seen with any high society people nor with any high born people. She is never seen tycoons nor their significant others. She is never seen with the aristo crowd. She is never seen with the artsy or celebrity types like comedians, actors, artists or media people. She is rarely seen with the Queen or with Camilla and never with Princess Anne?
I think that Kate doesn’t really know what to do in high society. She is after the status and that is guaranteed by being married to William.
Or maybe she’s just happy being with her family in her spare time?
After all, when she met Brad and Angie everyone on here went nuts calling her a staff-cker and saying celebs are all she cares about….
The meeting with AJ was because Middleton is an obsessed AJ fan girl. The entire Hollywood tack-on to the Canada tour was so Middleton could meet celebrities. The main goal was AJ but she refused to attend.
Ultimately the meet-and-greet with AJ and Pitt wasn’t a business meeting, it wasn’t to start building connections with important people who do humanitarian work. It was so fan-girl could fawn over AJ and get her picture taken.
What has been noted for years is that the Middleton clan is insular, bizarrely so. Even the parents don’t have any friends. Pippa’s social set is the one she superglued herself to to try to marry rich-and-titled, hence the Wisteria Sisters moniker.
The Middletons ended up inviting strangers from Berkshire to the wedding, because they had no friends to fill up the seats. Are they worried that no friends could be trusted? Seriously? The family that gifted us with Uncle Gary is worried that their friends would leak like sieves?
Add that to William’s secrecy obsession, and their kids are going to be the royal equivalents of Howard Hughes. Nothing Normal in that.
My god she is dowdy.
I bet she has 25 cats and knits scarves for grandchildren that refuse to visit her because her house smells like moth balls and she soaks her dentures in the drinking glasses. Her hair does look quite nice in that last picture though.
Are those gray shoes with the dress in question????
To have the world’s best best fashion at your fingertips and have others pay for it, and Thai is what we see on her. I give up.
I was fine with the dress (even if the name doesn’t make sense) but those shoes do not go at all. At least they aren’t beige?
Finally she’s done something different with her shoes! Now, if we could just get her to cut her hair a little and ease off the sausage curls……
Snooze-fest.
Materialism.
Trying to be relevant when she isn’t.
That posture is atrocious.
You said it all, Vava.
Oh man. I do think the first dress is cute if not overwhelming. But the black Preen dress. Christ. I loved the red one and the way it was styled. This looks so damn … well not modern. The belt and the hair … yikes. I do like the shoes but come on. How about a ponytail? Nice earrings? IT’S NOT THAT HARD!
It’s typical attire for her when she’s meeting children, long floaty dress or short floaty dress with massive heels and the mop flowing around.
Love the shoes!
I’m 5’10 and bony up top like her, she needs a better, higher neckline by a few inches to flatter her.
Hey we all got our less flattering angles!
I was obsessed with Dippy as a kid. I used to go and see him over and over again and study him for hours taking all my dinosaur books with me. Strange kid.
That dress couldn’t be less reminiscent of Cersei Lannister if it tried.
Love the black dress but aren’t they supposed to reserve black for mourning only? The hair, however, looks a tad juvenile for the sophistication of the dress, but, whatever. The “Dippy” day event dress is dowdy. Neckline is the issue. A scoop neck would have been just as appropriate but make her look less like she raided her grannie’s old clothes chest in the attic.
But e dress is typical for events where she’s with children. As for the hair, i can’t, she can afford to get the best stylists and yet continues to have hair that looks like she does it herself. I preferred her hair when that guy did it, cant remember his name, he did it for the first yr or so after their wedding. He’s the one that got sacked after blabbing to the press that she wore weaves. I don’t get why she won’t admit to them, nothing wrong with it, many people wear them.
It amazes me to look back a few years ago and realize how excited I was about Will & Kate’s wedding. He seemed like a stand-up guy to me, who wanted, however briefly, to make is mark in the world as a regular working guy before taking on royal duties. And she seemed refreshingly low-key. I am SO OVER both of them, especially her. She angled for this job for YEARS and now refuses to do it. What an utter waste.
Can anyone explain why she always hunches over or slouches like that? I don’t get it. It makes her look like a doofy teen-ager.
She does it when she’s uncomfortable or doesn’t want to be there. It’s the same with the crotch clutching.
Stop making kate try to happen. It’s done with her.
Yup. Forget about Kate. We want Meghan!
$4000 of new clothing for less than 2 hours worth of work.
The new print dress is just as ugly as the similar boho dress she wore to meet the Obamas. Why not repeat that one? Or any of the themed long dresses she wore in India.
Her shopping addiction has her shopping in multiples again. Two boho print chiffon dresses, two identical tea-length cocktail dresses. And yes, all-black is against protocol unless she is in mourning.
She is so tiring.
Ugh, the racism in the comments in that Daily Fail article.
I don’t even want to look… is it because of the little girl in the headscarf?
That dress isn’t worthy of sharing a name with my all-time favorite fictional character AT ALL, but I still love it being named after her.
The name Cersei really is so beautiful!
Cersei’s costumes are among the best on the show (though I loved Sansa’s and Margery’s wedding dresses as well – beautiful dresses for horrible weddings). The costume designer Michele Clapton is very talented – though she left the show after season 5, she designed a few costumes for season 6 (most notably Cersei’s black coronation dress) and happily she’s returning for season 7.
She also designed the costumes for the English Civil War drama The Devil’s Whore and she’s doing the costumes for The Crown as well.
Someone ought to inform LK Bennett that a Cersei dress without sumptuous fabrics and detailed ornamentation is no Cersei dress at all. This dress, while lovely, could only aspire to be Cersei’s sleeping shift. 😉
I wonder if they got permission to call it ‘Cersei’? ITA Cersei is a lovely name and her costumes on the show are some of the best – but its L K Bennet, who are known to be rather bland.
I’ll give her points on the evening shoes. Most interesting thing she’s worn in forever.
I follow Kensington Palace on instagram. I need someone to do a study: does Kate only go out and do events when Harry is doing them as well? It’s like she doesn’t want the instagram feed to be dominated by him, so she’ll rouse herself for a couple hours of work. Except hers are always far less impressive. Harry working with elephants and conservationalists in Africa…versus Kate petting a cat from a movie. Kate cutting a dinosaur cake and doing a craft while Harry visits children in several countries.
And yet if she went on overseas trips for charity events you would rag her for wasting money and going on “vacation”.
So true. I love how Kate and William’s trip to Canada was dismissed as a “vacation” as soon as it was announced, while Harry’s Carribean tour is “work”. Double standards are fun.
W&K did around 30 engagements in Canada. That was the combined number between the two of them.
Harry is doing 40-50 solo.
One was a HoliTour, one is much more like one of Charles’s tours. See if you can spot the difference.
Harry is doing more events that Will and Kate did and he isn’t scheduling any private time like they did. And before you use the kids as a reason for Canada, they also had private time during the India trip.
While the concept of these tours may be meaningless no matter where they go, the attitude adopted by Harry as opposed to Will and Kate is telling. Harry showed up early to an event, whereas Will and Kate were always running late.
The pattern of the Cersei dress makes me think of when an office gets a makeover and they install new carpeting to replace the old, grey carpet colour resembling Kate’s shoes.
“should be made of gold and vengeance” – perfect!
Kate is no one from GoT. Maybe Woman A from some throwaway scene.
Kate is definitely Beth Blanderson from Walking Dead. Bland and boring and meh.
Did you mean the Natural History Museum?
Kate wishes she was a Margeary. She’s early seasons damsel in distress irritating Sansa. The black dress is pretty, minus the belt. The shoes are really cute
Interesting thought.
What do you think which GoT character does mostly resemble Kate? She reminds me a bit of a young and idealistic Sansa but the latter actually has backbone and decency.
Kate also reminds me a bit of Cersei minus the power and the will to rule and the fashion sense and the lust/passion. Kate reminds me of Cersei when it comes to cluelessness: Cersei in some ways is quite clueless what it takes to run an empire. She doesn’t know about the finances of her own house and she doesn’t know that arming a religious order is a dangerous thing.
Just who has thicker skin? Cersei or Kate?
I can see that. Cersei doesnt consider the bigger picture, she only considers her short term goals. Kate’s only goal was getting Will down the aisle, it doesnt seem like she considered that she would have to work after the wedding
She seems to really enjoy being with children. I like both dresses on her. She appears very princessy. The kids probably loved it!
Yeah, she does. Probably glad to speak to someone on her own intellectual level 🙂
Lol you’re bad!!
Awesome burn.
She wore two different styles of shoes! Holy cow!
And neither pair were nude!!!
I was expecting red or gold. And how is William Joffrey? Seriously?
I think she has taken up gardening at Amber her finger tips look a bit discoloured –
During this time of year? I do see bandages on her fingers again, but I am pretty sure gardeners do all the manual labour at Amner.
Cersei would never wear that color. It neened to have gold or metallic or red. I like the other dress actually.
The afternoon dress that people keep referring to as granny-like is what I grew up thinking of as a church dress. Feminine, yet unsexy. Something dressier than what one would wear to shop in, less dressy than for a party, and not sufficiently professional as to be mistaken for a secretary — let alone an executive of any sort. That’s Kate. She’s very thin, and has a lot of very nice hair (I’m not quibbling about hairpieces here, whoever paid for it, it’s hers now), and is almost a woman.
Does anyone know why recently The Queen has been loaning Kate lots of her own jewelry all of the sudden? Are The Queen and Kate close?
Really good question, I’ve noticed that too.
So what do you think?
Maybe this is the Queen’s way of publicly supporting Kate and deflecting criticism. When the sh!t hit the fan about Andy’s possible underage hookup, she promoted him. She hasn’t yet awarded Kate with the RFO, a more meaningful gesture of respect, but she’ll give her permission to try on some serious bling. She could be making a public statement along the lines of… Kate may not be quite up to the job yet, but she’s family now.
Nope but its prob a way of bribing her to get out and perform her public duties – we can see that she wears something new every time she’s seen in public.
I can see William stomping his feet, just like I suspect he did over the Lovers Knot. HM is so exhausted and passive, never acting until beyond crisis point. If it gets the lazy miss to show up for an hour of work, fine, let her wear the damn earrings.
^ Indeed. I wonder how things will go down when Chuck takes the throne? He’s worse than his mother when it comes to avoiding confrontation, esp with his eldest son.
Oh we will see Kate and Harry’s future wife wearing a lot of jewels once Charles is King. But honestly she still hasn’t got the RFO. That’s quite sad.
She looks so normal in these photos, not bony at all. I’m calling it, she’s pregnant.
I thought that, too. In one of the pics her face looks a bit puffy.
Hmmmm and she certainly is holding her hands in front of her tummy a lot.
Agreed. Not bony. Clearly pregnant.
I don’t think so.
Ugh the length on the Cersei (snort) dress is AWFUL. The pointy shoes make it worse. For someone with a huge clothing budget she almost always manages to look dowdy.
N’aww. She looks like a little simpleton in that picture.
Apparently there was a speech at the Place2Be event—anyone see it? Has Kate improved her speech game at all?
Huge improvement. Some head bobbing, but no hair flicks. Most of her speech was audible and actually made sense. She had a better speechwriter this time, I think.
Stop slouching!
“Oh how nice! I don’t have a cerise dress…”
*dress turns up*
“HEY THAT’S NOT CERI- oh.”
I’m not a fan of either dress. The day dress was dowdy and frumpy. However at least she was decently covered and not flaunting her legs in front of the children. No marilyn moments either.
I didn’t like the evening dress when she wore the red version and I don’t like it in black either. The neckline does her no favours as it emphasises how bony she is.
With regards to the poor posture, could it be because she is wearing such high heels? She doesn’t appear so stooped when she wears flats.