The younger-royal trio came out for an event today in London. Prince Harry and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge did a Heads Together event at the Institute of Contemporary Arts to promote the London Marathon, which will be benefiting Heads Together. Heads Together is the mental-health umbrella organization that Will, Kate and Harry started last year. I’ve yet to see evidence that Heads Together does little more than provide photo-ops for Will, Kate and Harry though. Kate and William were already patrons of several mental-health-related charities, so why do they need an umbrella organization? I still don’t know.
As for the fashion, Kate chose a new frock, meaning it’s a dress we haven’t seen before. She wore a $1876 Erdem dress in black, with some kind of floral applique. The dress is okay, and I particularly enjoy this silhouette on Kate – she goes to the “floaty skirt” well too many times, and I’ve been dying to see her get into some pencil skirts and more streamlined looks. Unfortunately, whoever is styling her doesn’t realize that they need to look at the “full picture.” A streamlined silhouette plus big Dollywood hair = Kate looks like a lollipop. There’s too much bigness going on up top. Oh, and she doesn’t look pregnant at all here.
Will, Kate and Harry apparently gave short speeches about mental health. The @KensingtonRoyal Twitter conveniently did not publish videos of Kate’s speech, but one of the royal reporters got a video. I can barely hear Kate, but I can tell that she was completely unprepared.
Video: Kate's speech today @heads_together pic.twitter.com/OXwtQpYhUZ
— Rebecca English (@RE_DailyMail) January 17, 2017
Photos courtesy of Getty, WENN.
Wait…the shoes. Uh….I’m no fashion expert, but don’t those sorta clash??
In a closeup of the dress, you can see little burgundy flowers (same color as the shoes/bag). I like it so much better than those black or nude pumps she always defaults to.
I like this whole look (though I’m not fond of such a high neck)
Badly. A rarely cute and modern dress from her, and the styling is terrible. Naturally. Seriously, fuck her! This is literally her ONLY job at this point. To look good, using tax money. Get a stylist!
Eheheh. Sorry about that little outburst. But, honestly, my eye twitched.
👏👏👏there is no excuse for those shoes! Forget the color the styling is all wrong…Boooo Kate!
I agree. It actually annoys me when she can’t pull a great outfit together.
IDK, I am beginning to think her crap fashion is some kind of performance art trolling. No one with as much money as Kate can consistently look so bad.
i wish she would stand up straight for once
Too late, that will never happen.
I was just about to type this. Her poor posture is maddening to me.
All the hair extensions are weighing her down, possibly contributing to the poor posture. Check out the Daily Mail. They put pictures from today and last engagement side by side so you can tell how much has been added. They are trolling her.
What’s up with that long mop on her head? I start to think she doesn’t cut her hair so she can hide behind it.
She said in an interview once that “William likes it long”. And we all know how she said i the engagement interview that she “only cares what William thinks”. She’s never going to cut it above *boob length*. That’s the shortest we’ve ever seen it.
IMO, she looks ridiculous with that long mop on her head.
It can still be long but look better. It just hangs there lank. She really needs to get some long layers cut into to give it some body and life. She styles herself to keep his attention – its always been that way. She has never really dressed/styled for herself.
@Digital:
You’re right.
Kate has access to the best designers, to the best hairdressers in the world but nothing happens.
It really annoys me when women say they wear their hair long b/c their spouse, BF likes it, even those it looks terrible & they know it looks terrible. I kind of feel sorry for her; she’s hanging on to those college days when William was really in to her. She would look so much better with a more stylish cut.
It’s not like he’s been faithful to her so she is an idiot for keeping a style that makes her look older and foolish.
She’s trolling William with how much hair she can grow.
LMAO!
+1 haha
+2! She’s Willie’s own little Chia pet.
Lmfao 😂😂😂😂😂
Not so much the length it’s just there is so much of it. Has she ever heard of thinning shears?
She probably has but maybe it’s really William who likes her hair like that and that’s why she doesn’t change it.
I think she has extensions in there for volume.
@HappyMom:
She does, yes.
I can see the extensions in the video. They move very sluggishly compared to her own hair. It’s wierdly fascinating.
Why would she or anyone, deliberately thin their hair?
My hair person used to thin mine out because it has too much volume.
When you have naturally thick hair, you get it thinned during hair cuts because it is better for it. It also makes styles less bushy. And thinning isn’t a big deal because your naturally thick hair grows back quickly anyway.
Kate’s hair is not that naturally thick though. It was thinner at Christmas when she didn’t have a stylist to add the extensions. Also she has a poor diet so she has lost a lot of hair thickness since her university days.
I’d kill for her hair.
no need to harm somebody, you totally can buy her hair
@dotdotdot, I got extensions once, but my own blonde hair is so thin, it was hard to hide the extensions. Not a good look at all.
@Sarah, yes-I actually got my hair colored darker so my extensions don’t show. I have a love/hate with them. I can’t stand the constant care (I’m really low maintenance) but I like having some volume. My own hair is so fine and thin.
I have no problem with the length or anything but my god, get a more modern cut or blowout! What IS that? She looks like she just escaped an early 90’s hairspray commercial. It’s just so dated and makes her look so old.
Yep, it really does age her.
I think she looks like a 1980’s Herbal Essences ad.
I think she does hide behind it. Regardless, I don’t really care about her hair, her dress is OK, but that she did that speech completely unprepared really annoys me. Most speakers even remotely familiar with a text mostly look at their audience, occasionally looking down to grab what is next. Kate looks down 90% of the time, only glancing up. So either she had no idea what was written in the BIG 30 second speech or she really is very, very nervous talking in public and should never have campaigned for this job in the first place. One year younger than Diana was she died, and this is where she is at.
@Sarah: WOW. I hadn’t thought about it that way, and it makes her poor performance of her job look sooooo much worse when you consider that she’s only a year younger than Diana was when she died.
I can’t even get over the jarring difference between the two. Kate still seems like an adolescent compared to Diana.
Kate is an adolescent compared to most 35 year old women. Let’s give regular women with jobs some credit. They could never faff around for decades like she has and not end up fired and homeless.
Diana may have been special because she used her position to promote issues that needed worldwide attention but Kate cannot even handle what women all over the world do in community groups, PTA committees, and just their day to day jobs. She is infantilized to the extreme and it is frankly disturbing. No credit is given that she spoke words. How low is that standard? If we complain about normalizing Trump in his rare non psychotic moments, we can’t pretend that Kate doing a half ass infinitesimal aspect of her job should be given any credit. You cannot still be this bad at speeches after six years without trying.
I like the dress, and her hair looks great too.
I like the dress too.
You said something good about Kate! Get ready to be expelled from this place lol 😉
Nah I agree the hair is amazing. But her styling is awful as usual.
Well, it’s just another Kate granny dress.
Horrible hair and dress. Also Harry looks peeved.
I also saw some pics of the event, Harry doesn’t look happy at all.
@Munichgirl, I wonder why? Usually he is very happy.
Don’t know… maybe he’s just ill tempered today.
He’s just missing his boo, thats all. 😉
Maybe this was changed from a solo engagement to include the Doolittles. With all their bad publicity lately, they might want to use Harry to leech off some of his public goodwill. IMO I wouldn’t put it past them.
Maybe Harry is sad because he and his girlfriend is no more. Who knows? We mostly just make up this stuff.
Agreed. Kate’s speech?
Harry should have brought MM! Perhaps that would push Kate to put more effort.
As much as I’d love to see them together, MM’s presence would have overshadowed the entire event.
Boring
Ditto. Boring, and expensive.
Totally unprepared right? But isn’t this how all of her speeches look. She looks up at the audience the way she should be looking down at her notes for a second at a time. She’s looking down reading 98% of the time. Can someone please help her?! It’s just exhausting to watch after all of these years she still seems like she’s brand new to this job.
She could help herself so easily, though, by spending an hour or so in the mirror practicing the speech. She didn’t have to memorize the whole thing – she just needed to commit a few lines to memory – so that she wouldn’t have to look down at her notes every 10 seconds.
She could just get a public speech coach. Heck even join Toastmasters if they have a UK chapter. This is so frustrating watching her speak.
What I was thinking….TOASTMASTERS! But then she’d have to hear the ways she could improve…..I don’t think she wants to……otherwise, she would have already…..
Yay for Toastmasters! I am so tickled to hear it referenced on CB.
My work used to have a Toastmasters group, which I begrudgingly joined because I was friends with the girl who ran it and she wrote me a really nice note about why she wanted me to join. I have to say, I got a lot more out of it than I was expecting. Aside from public speaking, it really improved my ability to make small talk and speak to disparate groups of people. It also made me more conscious of using “um,” like,” “ya know,” etc.
I hate public speaking. But when I had to do it for my job I practiced ALL the time. She should use some of the time she spends on her hair to practice public speaking.
I used to hate public speaking and giving presentations but I did a lot of acting classes and that helped me tremendously in overcoming my anxiety. I have said this on here before but she really should get from those in the acting profession to work on her public speaking and interactions. Diana did it – she worked with Sir Richard Attenborough.
Maybe if the speech was about her hair or “toned legs” she would put more effort into it.
@DU (aka Betti) that’s a great idea. She could get a good-looking actor to do it, that might add some incentive for her. She certainly enjoyed meeting Idris Elba (not that I blame her, I’d have had the same expression).
I can’t watch her speeches because her accent bothers me so much.
At least they’ve done some engagements so far.
Her accent is SO BAD. I can hardly understand what she’s saying, her vowels are so narrow. And I can always understand William and Harry perfectly, so it’s not a posh thing.
Hair is getting in Cousin It territory again………..maybe she’s growing her security blanket even longer to deal with her nerves about competing with Meghan and/or the imminent stress of having to live in London, oh horrors!
That speech—somebody needs to teach her how to say more than 1 word without looking at her notes….. Maybe Meghan can help her out with that, since she is skilled at memorizing scripts!
She’s really bad at giving speeches but I guess she doesn’t care.
Everything about her styling was wrong imo. Shoes and bag didn’t go with her dress and the hair is huge.
This event was completely pointless. It was promoted as setting out their plans for heads together and that plan is to use the same vague points over and over again to make conversation. But what about those who talk doesn’t help, those not paying attention to heads together (most people) and those who even after hearing the conversations still think people with mental illnesses (still so vague, talking won’t help all mental illnesses -they need to be more specific regarding which ones) just need to make themselves happy, be more confident etc. They’re still so insulated from how cruel and ugly mental illnesses can be.
The few clips I’ve seen of the royals discussing mental health are things like “parents should pay attention to their children feeling sad” and “don’t be afraid to seek help for your problems” and that sort of thing, a very softball and euphemistic way of approaching a serious issue. It gives me the impression that they really know very little about mental illness and they haven’t bothered to learn.
IMO they could do more to educate the public on the causes of various types of mental illness and the options for care, the fact that some of it is genetic predisposition, how much substance abuse is rooted in people trying to self-medicate for untreated mental health issues, etc. And even more, they should raise funds for research–I sort of assume that is part of what they are doing but I don’t really hear about it?
Her clothes are so tightly tailored I wonder how she actually gets into them sometimes.
I think she looks pretty, face wise, and I like the dress. The hair is way too much though. She either needs to style it differently, straighter, stop adding extensions, or cut it
I think she needs both less extensions and layers.
These people are utterly tone deaf. Spending so much money on bloody dresses, while the rest of us are struggling to get a GP appointment because the NHS is underfunded. What a joke.
I know this is becoming the usual tune from me..but for F*&Ks sake.
I feel like William was watching over her like a hawk as she read.
He is afraid she will embarrass him, and rightly so.
I don’t get her clothing choices – but it’s time people/magazines stop calling her fashion icon.
Isn’t that Sophie Hunter’s dress?!
Dress is kinda cute, but not worth $2,000.
Even the reporter filming it was bored. She was unprepared as usual, hiding behind Cousin It and she spent far too much time looking down at her notes and not enough time looking in front of her. Looking at your audience is one of the golden rules of giving a speech/presentation – if you are not engaged or interested neither are they.
Harry looks pissed off in a ‘well that didn’t go so well’ kinda way.
He might be annoyed due to all the press around MM’s half-brother having been arrested on the weekend. Rather lowers the tone.
At least he didn’t do what William did when Uncle Gary was caught in a salacious,potentially criminal sting.
He arranged a pap to ‘catch’ him snogging Kate outside a pub. Took the uncle Gary story from the front pages and replaced it with ‘ exclusive: William kisses Kate…First Pics evah!’
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqhli9GaZ81qi5ek3.jpg
What makes you think Will arranged that and not Kate? Wasn’t that Tanna who took those pics?
William didn’t sue.
Yes, Tanna took pictures and video.
Unclear whether William knew that Tanna would take the pictures given his antipathy towards the man, but the uncle Gary Scandal had to be deflected so he puckered up and allowed himself to be filmed and plastered all over the news.
@LAK:
Well, someone did leak stories to Us Weekly and The Sun about how loved up Meghan and Harry are just after Meghan’s brother was arrested.
From what I understand they were quite rude to the press pack. Didn’t acknowledge greetings.
William was specifically rude according to Richard Palmer. He didn’t include Harry or Kate in that tweet though.
She isn’t influential in any sort of way, not even fashion. Imagine the humongous possibilities….she could literally move mountains by her words, take a cause and fight for it. World doesn’t respect her, just flattering so they could sell magazines. I mean, look at Melinda Gates, Michelle Obama and the likes.
Sonia Ghandi (an Italian) dedicated her life to a country which wasn’t hers (India). Talk about Kate Middleton, she doesn’t seem to give a damn about her own country which she parasites.
Waste of space.
I cannot help it…… Duchess of Cambridge vs Mrs. Obama……..Mrs. O didn’t have half the advantages DoC did and yet……look at how differently they use their power…..
Wait – is there footage of the other speeches? Why are we only criticizing KM?
Yuk! Hideous dress. The hair is awful. She really needs a major makeover in all aspects of her appearance and posture. While it’s nice to see her not wearing the nude courts, the shoes she chose today look clumpy and don’t seem to match the dress. Two appearances since new year, a trip to Mustique must be on the cards soon.
Her hair looks great – it’s a bit beauty pageant contestant for my tastes, but it looks bouncy and shiny and healthy so whatever. The dress is cute, too. But…with all the criticism of what she spends and how little she works, I think showing up to a philanthropic event in a brand new $1000 dress is a bad idea. She could have spent a third of that on something just as pretty.
Actually that dress was almost $2000 US. (almost $3000 CDN)Absurd! Why does she need a new dress for almost every engagement? Her hair is embarrassing. Rather than spend hours fixing her hair for her 30min engagement, she should have invested it in practising her public speaking. There is no excuse for her lack of preparation after almost 6 years (!) in the RF. SMH
Agree – the obvious disparity between the amount of time she spent getting her hair did vs. the amount of time she spent preparing for her speech, is CLASSIC.
Big hair and a skinny body don’t go along well.
I think she looks great except the shoes and the hair could be more polished but it’s still pretty.
I like the dress. Her hair is repulsive in that piles of wiglets have been used to create the effect.
I think Kate has explained why she looks and acts as she does. Wills likes long hair, Wills doesn’t care about her taking a professional role. He doesn’t care about himself having a public role. So no improvement in taking their royal responsibilities seriously.
She tries to hit the marks that Wills does like about her such as the florid cartoonish hair. She is a few disparate parts adding up to nothing because Wills doesn’t really like her as a person. He likes Carole’s subservience and deference. This is why it suits Wills that he and the Midds can only step out into the outside world en masse. He does not enjoy KM’s company.
KM is a very sad person totally dominated and controlled by her mother and Wills. There is nothing more to her.
My goodness, I did not know you actually knew them all, and so intimately!
All the above comments can be summed up by quote Kate’s Jigsaw employer gave regarding parametres Kate put around any employment opportunities at Jigsaw, “She genuinely wanted a job, but she needed an element of flexibility to continue the relationship with a very high profile man and a life she can not dictate.” Evening Standard 2008
oh please. that’s a stretch.
let’s agree to disagree LAK (hugs)
Original Kay: (hugs) Not disagreeing with me. That quote comes from the mouth of Kate’s Jigsaw boss. It unintentionally reveals alot about that relationship. The Jigsaw boss wasn’t being snarky or unkind. Entire interview is framed in a way that is meant to elicit sympathy for Kate, but ends up revealing how much Kate was/is dictated by the relationship.
Subsequent random quotes via interviews or on walkabout from Kate have unintentionally made it very clear that she is governed by William and Carole.
I agree with you, IJ. And yet she primps and shops like a champion.
Good heavens, she was his own private call girl, nothing more. She probably sees herself as incredibly lucky instead of a high end prostitute !!!
Yes, with her own mother practically acting as her pimp.
ITAWY, Indiana.
“florid cartoonish hair” yes that about describes it!
Why do you bother to ask? I know before I even click on the stories about Kate that they’ll be negative!
How would you write a story about her positively? I mean this genuinely. What is there to write? Kate gave a short speech and wore a new dress. I do agree that CB in general is very hard on her, but what is she doing that combats anything said here?
I’m not sure Kate cares much what is written on gossip blogs about her tbf, doubt it’s high in her priories of things to deal with.
Actually, Kate’s speech was much longer than she normally does. That video is 1 minute of a several minutes long speech.
She looks tired … maybe she’s working too hard?
Thanks for the laugh xD
They actually joked about it!! Apparently they think it’s cute that everyone knows they don’t do a GD thing. From today’s Daily Mail article:
“Sean, who is running the 26.2 mile course for charity Young Minds after his 13-year-old son was recently diagnosed with OCD, said: ‘I chatted to Prince William and he has promised that he will run a marathon in Kenya sometime.
‘Then I spoke to Kate and she said ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’.”
Why run a marathon in Kenya instead of the UK? Or why not do both? He should stop trying to shoehorn Kenya into things.
And there’s absolutely no way he’s only been to Kenya once since 2010
LOOOORD
The dress is meh. Too cutsie patootsie for a 35 year old, IMO. But compared to some of her shocking choices, it’s pretty good. Regarding her speech, I think she looks like she’s two minutes away from crying. Zero confidence and ownership of the words she’s saying. Public speaking is super hard, but we can all train and improve, if we set our mind to it. But that would require more effort than just skim reading the speech on the way to the event.
She looks good.
I think she looks beautiful and very well put together. She has such a nice trim figure and gorgeous legs. She should show them off! Love that they are supporting mental health. It’s a very worthy cause.
I lurrrrrrveeee reading your comments even though they put me at a high risk of getting diabetes.
Lol! We aren’t all green with envy.
Funny, I just attended a lecture on human dissection and the poor corpse would have been a beautiful girl some years back. Physical beauty doesn’t matter to me, I am pretty decent myself. Kate Middleton doesn’t bother me, she is an ordinary woman in an extraordinary situation. But your hero worship of her is laughable.
p.s you are still my favorite commenter.
Thank you for making me smile 🙂
It’s funny, the way your comment is written reads like Kate’s legs are supporting mental health.
Made me laugh 🙂
Haha! You’re right it does read like her legs are supporting mental health. Too funny! I must pay more attention to how I phrase next time.
Yay she is wearing something more modern and age-appropriate and NOT monochromatic! It’s a good look. And she changed up her shoe game!
I actually love the dress and the way she picked up the burgundy in the dress with her accessories and think she looks great – from the neck down. The hair is ridiculous and the article in the DM was FULL of snark about how “newly voluminous” it was, alluding in almost every paragraph and caption to extensions without flat-out saying it.
The event and speech, though – as Lainey said above, they just keep regurgitating the same exact phrases over and over again. What has this campaign actually *achieved*?
As someone who has pretty severe social anxiety, it’s painfully obvious she struggles with the same issues. What I don’t understand is why she doesn’t get some help for it, especially being that she is advocating to destgmatize this very thing.
Watching her white knuckle it through these speeches and events is heartbreaking. I think with proper treatment she could let her defenses down, and rather than being preoccupied with her feelings of panic, she might actually be able to relax, engage and grow.
Treating my social anxiety really changed my life. My psychiatrist helped me realize that it would be most difficult to have a good quality of life if I didn’t adress this biochemical issue in my brain, and how I wish the fame for Kate.
I think there is a lot more going on than social anxiety with Kate. However, she doesn’t white knuckle it throu ALL engagements just the ones like this one and ones where she’s not interested. Watch her at sailing events with Sir Ben Anslie – you will see a different person.
Doesn’t it say a lot that she has obvious mental health issues and is supposedly championing the cause and telling people they should talk about it more when she doesn’t even bother to get treatment herself? It’s probably a better position for her to just be lazy and not care to practice her speeches because the alterntsive makes her a huge hypocrite for mental health issues and literally contradicts her poorly worded speeches on the issue b
Her speaking skills are pathetic after all these years. Just demonstrates how incredibly lazy this woman is. It’s made worse by the fact that she continues with this odd accent of hers – to the point where she sounds rather “breathy”. I hope Harry marries someone who can blow Kate out of the water. That might be the only way to motivate this loon.
I don’t mind the dress. The posture is awful as usual. The hair is ridiculous. I’m just thankful she didn’t wear one of her gazillion black suede court shoes – but those Todd shoes don’t really work with this dress. I would have picked something a bit edgier.
Should William just shave his head? Wouldn’t that look better or does he have a weirdly shaped head?
Been perusing the Royal Reporter twitter feed and he’s been quite informative. Apparently a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ meetings by W&K and H are suddenly appearing in the Court Circular as official engagements – i guess thats what William meant by undertaking more public duties, making his ‘meeting’ official.
Plus, i loved this tweet:
“The royal press pack has decided that part of having a national conversation about mental health should involve saying hello to people.”
Apparently they refused to acknowledge the press on arrival and departure – one photog called ‘bye’ when they were leaving and was met with stoney silence.
I saw that report too. The reporters are clearly really frustrated and irritated. Bill and Kate are pissing them off big-time.
Why are they so rude to the press? Are they following the lead of Trump? Are they hanging with Putin, too? 🙂
Reading that tweet just made me snort laughing!
But overall, the way they treat the royal press pack is abhorrent. I’m glad the reporters are calling them out on it. Not acknowledging them is just plain bad manners, nothing more.
My kingdom for a chic bob!
Horrible speech, horrible hair, horrible fake caring from all three.
Kate must be reading the blog. Seems 2017 is going to be the year of the charity event(s).
I think someone’s had a chat with those two.
…or she’s worried about being overshadowed by Meghan.
“Lollipop chic” is cutting it wayyyyy too much slack. It’s heinous.
In case you’re up late, I just want to *high five* you for just speaking the damn truth. GAH! That dress looks like it smells of moth balls from having spent 20 years in an attic before it was donated to Goodwill.
There’s no point commenting on Kate’s fashion. She has no style whatsoever and is a totally boring dresser. The most interesting thing about her outfit today is her left eyebrow which seems to have a life of its own.
Poor Wills. How in the hell has he lost his looks so quickly? It’s not just the hair either. His face is just so beefy looking. He was a gorgeous young man with a cute smile and now he is just barely average with a watermelon head and big teeth.
Harry needs a better tailor. His pants never fit him as well as they should.
Does she seriously talk like that when in casual conversation with friends and family ? I’m not British so every British voice is an “accent” to my ears admittedly. But her breathy delivery, the very careful enunciation of each word sounds to me like what I sound like trying to imitate her — intense focus on how to pronounce each word that doesn’t come naturally.
Here here! She is fake all the way.