The photos from Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling’s weekend wedding are just another reminder that British women from a certain class have zero fashion sense. They actually pride themselves on looking frumpy, dowdy and older than their years. It’s a class indicator for them – the frumpier they look, the posher they are. People had good reason to examine the photos of the wedding guests because, as it turned out, one of the Princess of Wales’ old boyfriends was there. Back in her college days, Kate dated Rupert Finch for a time, and Finch turned up at Peter’s wedding with his posh wife Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs. Some people said he resembles Roger Federer and I can really see it! Finch also has a full head of hair.
The Princess of Wales’s ex-boyfriend was among the glamorous guests at Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling’s nuptials in the Cotswolds on Saturday.
Rupert Finch reportedly dated Kate for just under a year in 2001 when the pair were students at the University of St Andrews – before she won the heart of Prince William. Their relationship was even depicted in season six of The Crown, with a floppy-haired Rupert portrayed by actor Oli Green.
At the time of their romance, Rupert was in his fourth year of studying and following St Andrews, he went on to graduate from the College of Law in Guildford.
The exes have remained on friendly terms, it seems, as Rupert was invited to William and Kate’s royal wedding at Westminster Abbey in London in April 2011.
Two years later, Rupert married the daughter of the 4th Marquess of Reading, Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs. Their nuptials in Cirencester in June 2013 were attended by Princess Eugenie and Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend, Cressida Bonas.
Natasha is no stranger to royal circles, as she and Lavinia Brennan are the founders of ethical fashion brand Beulah London. Their dresses have been coveted by blushing bride Harriet Sperling, as well as the Princess of Wales, the Duchess of Edinburgh and Princess Beatrice.
I actually had no idea about the connection to Beulah London. Kate wears Beulah London all the time, and I would imagine that’s on purpose, to support… her ex-boyfriend’s posh, aristocrat wife. Interesting. I mean, Prince William’s social circles are littered with ex-girlfriends and rumored (shall we say) “connections.” So it’s interesting that one of Kate’s exes is in these circles too. Kate could have had a man with good hair! Kate could have married someone who looks like Roger Federer!
Photos courtesy of Getty Images, Avalon Red, Cover Images.
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- Catherine, Princess of Wales and Prince William, Prince of Wales arrive for the Royal wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling at All Saints Church on June 06, 2026 in Kemble, England. Peter Phillips, the son of Princess Anne, Princess Royal and eldest grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II, will marry NHS Nurse and writer Harriet Sperling during a ceremony at All Saints’ Church in Kemble today.,Image: 1108326121, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no , Credit line: Jules Annan/Avalon
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- Catherine, Princess of Wales arrive for the Royal wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling at All Saints Church on June 06, 2026 in Kemble, England. Peter Phillips, the son of Princess Anne, Princess Royal and eldest grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II, will marry NHS Nurse and writer Harriet Sperling during a ceremony at All Saints’ Church in Kemble today.,Image: 1108326143, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no , Credit line: Jules Annan/Avalon
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- Catherine, Princess of Wales and Prince William, Prince of Wales arrive for the Royal wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling at All Saints Church on June 06, 2026 in Kemble, England. Peter Phillips, the son of Princess Anne, Princess Royal and eldest grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II, will marry NHS Nurse and writer Harriet Sperling during a ceremony at All Saints’ Church in Kemble today.,Image: 1108332636, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no , Credit line: Jules Annan/Avalon
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- Catherine, Princess of Wales and Prince William, Prince of Wales arrive for the Royal wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling at All Saints Church on June 06, 2026 in Kemble, England. Peter Phillips, the son of Princess Anne, Princess Royal and eldest grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II, will marry NHS Nurse and writer Harriet Sperling during a ceremony at All Saints’ Church in Kemble today.,Image: 1108332639, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no , Credit line: Jules Annan/Avalon
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- Royal wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling at All Saints’ Church in Kemble, England Featuring: Catherine, Princess of Wales Where: Kemble, United Kingdom When: 06 Jun 2026 Credit: Cover Images
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- Royal wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling at All Saints’ Church in Kemble, England Featuring: Catherine, Princess of Wales Where: Kemble, United Kingdom When: 06 Jun 2026 Credit: Cover Images
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- Royal wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling at All Saints’ Church in Kemble, England Featuring: Catherine, Princess of Wales Where: Kemble, United Kingdom When: 06 Jun 2026 Credit: Cover Images
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- Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs arrives for the Royal wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling at All Saints’ Church on June 06, 2026 in Kemble, England. Peter Phillips, the son of Princess Anne, Princess Royal and eldest grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II, will marry NHS Nurse and writer Harriet Sperling during a ceremony at All Saints’ Church in Kembl, Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs and Rupert Finch arrive for the Royal wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling at All Saints’ Church on June 06, will marry NHS Nurse and writer Harriet Sperling during a ceremony at All Saints’ Church in Kemble today.,Image: 1108401485, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no , Credit line: Jules Annan/Avalon
Frumpyness on steroids!
No joke! The posh set is truly weird. Like, I get the hand me down furniture and never discussing money but out-frumping each other at highly photographed events?
No joy, no fun, no fashion. What a soulless, creepy bunch. And as I have said before, no one does toddler old-lady wear as well as these people.
Kate looks super put together and nice in her white adjacent outfit. Especially compared to the tit hating Joanne fabric clearance patterns and dresses being worn by others.
Just why.
I like the prints on the dresses I can see, and I even like the green and white striped blazer someone is wearing over a hot fuchsia dress. Just the silhouettes/cuts of the dresses are confounding to me, they’re what makes it read frumpy. I hate tea length dresses, and high necklines make me feel like I’m being strangled just looking at them. Just a lot of really weirdly tight dresses.
Are support bras not a thing in England?
LMAO! The woman in the green stripe blazer looks like she is doing watermelon theme dressing. Fug and hilarious at the same time!
@Megan: OMG this is seriously the number one question I always have when I look at pics of the BRF. I just want to scream “wear a bra!” And if your bra doesn’t help, “get a new bra!” And if that doesn’t help, “wear some shapewear along with the bra!”
It’s not hard. Do they not own full length mirrors? Or are all of the mirrors that the BRF own are like 300+ year olds and thus warped and fun-house-like???
And in white shoes!! Nude shoes would’ve been nearly as frumpy (maybe even MORE frumpy?), but good thing there are SEVERAL other colors to choose from!
Why do so many women at these things look so frumpy? She may be posh be she and her friend look like doilies and cupcakes.
And does Kate *always* wear head to toe just-almost-white to weddings? Pale beige, palest of yellows, …
Better than the barely cream that she wore to Meghan’s wedding. Hard to believe it wasn’t white.
Someone on here once described it as “gaslighter white” and I will forever call it that lol. Primrose yellow my foot.
I think it was Red Snapper who came up with gaslighter white.
They also have my favourite truther theory about what happened as everyone was walking out of Philip’s funeral service and William telling Kate to back off when he was speaking with Harry.
Many aristocrats dress frumpy. It’s almost like the frumpier the better.
Exactly. Which is why William doesn’t have his teeth straightened and whitened, and his suites are tailored like it was 1940. He still has something to prove, because he is not the poshest bluest blood of the bunch. His mother was.
Both William and Harry wore braces on their teeth as kids. This is the result. 🤷♀️
I read somewhere that the style of orthodontics especially braces, was different in Europe and the UK compared to North America, especially back in the 80s and 90s. That method is what makes the teeth not always look like they have had braces, at least in the way we are used to in North America.
This is how they guard the gates. Anybody who puts too much effort into their clothes and appearance is clearly exposing themselves as a social climbing wannabe.
William absolutely needed his palate expanded as a child. I wonder if he gets headaches etc from not having had it done.
I’ve known adults who have had surgery to correct this as adults and it’s a super painful recovery but they said that the relief is so worth it.
OMG the shoes are awful but those hats are DREADFUL. I wouldn’t go out of my house with something like that on my head.
That blue hat reminds me of Beatrice’s toilet bowl hat.
Why do women at these things always look so frumpy? She may be posh, but she and her friend look like cupcakes and doilies.
And why does Kate always go head to toe just-about-white – pale beige, pale yellows…
Isabelle de la Bruyere (girlfriend of David Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowdon) looked rather good in what appears to be silk dress and made the pale beige color work.
https://www.tatler.com/article/david-armstrong-jones-girlfriend
Yes l thought lsabelle looked beautiful, her hat was gorgeous
Ooooh, she’s gorgeous. Tall and elegant, if Kate-thin. And her outfit is how to do the blergh color dress and the matching stiff hat correctly for a June wedding guest: Hair up. Hat gives “summer straw boater” without making you look like you’re twelve years old, as Kate’s did. The satin – as Isabelle can pull it off with her figure – looked gorgeous and fit her perfectly and was appropriate to the time of year, unlike Kate who was wearing something like faux Chanel boucle knit (I’m still baffled that Roland Mouret of all people signed his name to that dress because it’s nothing like the style he’s known for). Delicate stilettos and no hose because again, June. Perfection. Is she French?
See I would describe that color as champagne😂. I consistently feel off in how I would describe a color vs how gets described. But yes, it a good look on a thin woman.
Her feet are horrendous in those shoes. She should never have been in those sky-high heels. She has bulging veins all over the tops of her feet.
That’s who I was referring to. She is the only one who didn’t look frumpy or childish. And of course she’s French.
She looks nice. Her daughter’s outfit is tragic, though.
I looked at her pic and thought wow, same color as Kate but a 1000 times more elegant and fashionable.
“Is she French?”
Yes, Isabelle de la Bruyere is either French or of recent French descent.
I believe she has been in the UK for about 30 years working at Christie’s
Goodness what a stunner. And it’s not wrinkled! How?!? I love the white contrast and the hat. Head to toe 10/10 no notes.
I’m assuming she’s French. Hence *waves vaguely* the fashion perfection. That coupled with her absolute air of confidence and the clothes not wearing her was delightful.
Someone needs to point out the unstyled just rolled out of bed and did a middle part because it’s 1995 hairdo. What this a theme wedding?
Is it a posh thing to invite all your exes to your wedding?
if my exes looked like that, I’d invite them to everything!
Sounds fair.
🤣🤣🤣
It must be because since Charles and Diana there’s always been an extra-girlfriend at these weddings. This is the first ex-boyfriend I can recall hearing about though. I’ve always found it weird.
Rupert has been reported on for years and years. But if you’ve not been following royal gossip that closely you may not have known.
She has more too. Henry Ropner and Willem Marx are the most commonly reported on. There could be other but those three have always come up.
Kate has dozens of exes, all in William’s friend group. She slept her way through them to get to Club H. During their repeated breakups she’d sleep with a few of them again to play on jealousy.
Kate slept with William’s friends during their breakups?? I get that aristo circles are not like us but how is that a strategy to get someone back? Sleeping with your ex’s friends is hurtful. It’s scorch the earth revenge. WTaF?!?
I think its because they all move in the same circles. If you didn’t invite anyone you’d ever dated, or a cousin of yours had dated, the list would shrink pretty fast.
According to the papers around Kate and William’s wedding, yes. It was described as the circles being small and incestuous and they all hook up with each other.
That top photo with Kate looking at Willliam as she exits the vehicle is another one of those split second moments that change entirely if you see the video.
Kate knew to look in his direction with a smile, but in the video, as she turns her head back to the front, she pulls a Melania and the smile drops so quickly.
Also – there is one woman who was dressed elegantly – I don’t know who she was, but she was walking next to Linley and was probably around his age. She was not frumpy or doing whatever Kate was trying to do.
I think she was the only woman who read as sophisticated and suitable for the wedding.
White button down top, black skirt, and black saucer hat? His sister, Lady Sarah Chatto.
Just saw post above. Could be Snowdon’s new girlfriend?
Ok Sarah Chatto wasn’t frumpy either, but I was referring to the woman named above. No shocker she’s not a British aristocrat
Isabelle de la Bruyere is her name and she is French.
Gotta say, this Rupert dude is a big upgrade on William, at least in terms of his looks.
No joke. What a hottie.
I’m thinking she has buyers remorse.
And a lawyer, so he has a real job. Nice.
Here to co-sign this. Hey there, Rupert 😉
I think NIC919 that was Linley’s french girlfriend Isabelle de la Bruyere
She really needs about 9-12” chopped off that hair. Or wig. Whatever. It’s not a good look.
Rupert, you dodged a bullet.
What in the Warren Jeffs hell are these women wearing?!
Why is the woman In the blue dress with the straggly hair and hat with a bow carrying a plastic bag?
The woman next to her, is that a hat, or did somebody just come along and stick a blue plate on her upper face?
Maybe there is some kind of major private joke going on when it comes to dressing at aristocratic weddings
From what I can tell, poorly-fitted bras and a lack of foundation garments are also major parts of the female aristo aesthetic.
😄😝😆😆
@Teagirl: I think that’s her shawl. I noticed lots of women carrying a shawl or scarf.
Thanks BB, I honestly thought it was some kind of bag
Now you know why she was smiling!! I agree, Rupert dodged a bunny-boiling bullet. Yowza & egads.
I just love this. What kind of an idiot throws this guy away for William? A very keen idiot, I suppose. He looks fantastic.
And frumpy or not, his wife is a beautiful woman with real curves and real hair and a real smile. Stuff you never see on Waity. The hat’s bad, but most of the hats are bad at this type of event.
She is a beautiful woman but nothing is working in her wedding look. She normally has a lot more personality in her outfits and looks far more polished.
“What kind of an idiot throws this guy away for William?”
Maybe Rupert Finch did not really want Wiggington!
A good bra would instantly improve some of these outfits. Sad boobs don’t help the looks at all.
Didn’t Beulah go into administration, like so many of Kate’s other “favourite” brands?
The papers used to frequently refer to Kate’s ex Rupert Finch, but I can’t think how long it has been since they mentioned that he was married to Natasha Rufus Isaacs.
And yes, when you look at the women who write for the tabloids and opine on morning and midday chat programmes about the royals (especially M) and the horrendous “fashion” they and their “betters” wear, you begin to understand the repeated references to Kate’s atrocious styling as “stunning”, “glamorous” and yes… “fashionable”. 😀
The “full head of hair” reference made me cackle. Even without the hair, that is a man who is aging well. He looks like a lawyer too, so I guess his appearance is well suited to his profession.
It really breaks my brain that these aristo women view class as being poorly dressed, look 10 years older than you are, being frumpy, not styling themselves appropriately, and overall not caring how they present themselves in public.
It’s accepted that you show up to society events looking like you rolled out of bed.
This is a wedding. You will be photographed. If I got married and my guests showed up looking like these women, I would feel deep insult that they didn’t think my wedding was important enough to dress properly.
And to think that these women are appearing in photos that are in the media. I would be pissed.
It also frames Meghan in a whole new light. Harry said when he first saw Meghan she looked so chic. It explains why so many of those women looked down on her style as too Hollywood and too glamorous and just “too much”. Meghan’s style isn’t too much anything. It is chic, modern, beautiful and stylish.
You can tell with such clarity how Meghan’s modern style influenced ALL the Royal women. They all upped their style game when Meghan came along bc she blew them out of the water by just being herself but with a royal flare.
Zara, Kate and Beatrice immediately spring to mind the Royal women who used to dress appallingly and really upped their game after Meghan.
These kinds of photos always make me think British women have atrocious fashion sense, but then I see a photo of non-aristocratic British women wearing perfectly chic fashion and I do a double take. These aristocratic women are representing British fashion horribly. Yet another reason to bring it all down!
This explains why some fashion houses in the UK keep going bust. These are the women who should be patronising them, but obviously don’t.
No they’re not. They are dressing as they’ve always done. My family went on many holidays to the Caribbean when I was a child, and the adults used to be able to identify the British tourists at the airports and in the upscale resorts from a distance simply by the extraordinarily frumpy way they dressed. Nothing’s changed.
I think I’ve identified why some of the aristo men have their trousers so long: it appears to be that they are tailored to ensure that their socks remain covered when they are seated? As a result, when they stand up, the extra fabric pools around their ankles, looking very ridiculous and unpolished. All that money for ill-fitting trousers, but so many of them are wearing over-long trousers now that they must believe that they look fashionable.
They all look like they bought their outfits off the racks at Marks & Spencer, before picking up lunch in the store’s prepared food section.
Do they not own mirrors?
The ex is quite yummy! No wonder Kate was smiling so wildly – – she seems like the type that would be overly familiar and oddly possessive of an ex in social settings
Why don’t any of these women wear properly fitting bras??????? Hoist those suckers, your’re gonna get kyphosis! Disclosure: am 60 with DDs
I would like an answer to that question as well ;0 Disclosure: am 70 with D
Because they don’t care . They have a very different attitude than Americans . They don’t like fakeness and perfect teeth etc . It’s seen as very basic and trashy . Too try hard .
The ex boyfriend is a smoke show. Great hair, handsome, and long, lean, fit body with nice musculature. But of course, he wasn’t the future king of England. I wonder if Kate’s mummy had to drag Kate away physically from this gorgeous hunk? If he were nice and a good guy, I’d have gladly pursued him instead. But I’m not a cut-throat gold digger with a a maniacal, ruthless mother. I wonder if Kate has any regrets? Too late now, of course. And lucky him, too. Maybe he broke up with her. So he’s a solicitor or barrister (?) and she’s an ethical fashion designer. Looks like the ex got the better woman, one with gumption and not the waiting type. He dodged a bullet!
The only Kate-ex I wanna hear about is Willem Marx.😉😉😉
I meant the waity-ing type , but was autocorrected. Everyone knows “waity-ing” is a real word, Kate’s only contribution to the English language. I should also say the ex is intelligent enough to become a lawyer and a man with a work ethic and hopefully not full of hate for his brother. She really lost out, imo.
Who is Willem Marx? Do tell. And for such an ordinary, not to say stupid and clinging young woman, she really had a lot of men around her. That was never my fate, but I did marry the love of my life in my thirties. No regrets there.
That blue dress worn by the owner of Beulah (wife of Kate’s ex) seems to be the same dress that Kate wore during that polo event where she tried to kiss William to give him the trophy and he side cheeked her and then blew away.
I checked, you are absolutely correct. Good memory!
To be fair I saw a side by side on social media.
I’ve always wondered if these stories about Kate’s ex boyfriends are just stories? Did Kate have one night stands with them to make William jealous and that’s all? These stories always have a feeling of being made up, or exaggerated, by the British tabloids so Kate doesn’t look like she was so invested in only chasing William?
There are photos of Kate with Richard Branson, which was during one of the break ups.
Richard Branson is famous so I’m expecting that Kate with her excellent radar for paps realised there was a camera pointing her way and slid in so she was included in a photo of a famous person.
And can we get some of them decent bras? Minimizers anyone? The prints that look like furniture and drapes with the low hanging….it’s a thing!
Such an unflattering dress on Natasha! And is the woman with her her mother? She’s carrying the same silver handbag that Zara did! Silver shoes, too. That hat! Does it double as a satellite dish? My word, the hideous dresses on all the women in this particular set of photos. That pink & green getup! Yikes!
Sunny, wow. Interesting perspective. Obviously, Americans always make fun of the Brits’ teeth (even the movie stars) for being a heavy yellow that Americans find appalling aesthetically (see Jeremy Irons). But “fakeness” and “too try hard?” The whole English aristocracy and kingdom is based on fakeness. Royal blood? Designated by God? That’s feudal stuff, which Americans reject a priori. But don’t ask me about how the Trump phenomenon came about because I don’t know and it upsets me too much to think about it. Also, it’s too “try hard” to find a well-fitting bra? What about the correct shoe size? Or clothes that actually fit and are neither too large nor too small (a la Kim Kardashian)? Maybe they think their “good breeding” excuses yellow teeth, and ill-fitting, frumpy clothes? They would be wrong. Of course, we have classism (though we don’t like to admit it). The best comparison I can find that is similar to British views, is the American distinction between “old money” and “new money” and that the nouveau riche are gauche. That I can understand.
Re: yellow teeth – teeth can have their natural colour that is usually not a bright white. I have fairly “dark” teeth, but they are all healthy and well aligned. It would not even cross my mind to overwhiten them or put caps/veneers (if this is the right expression). I also have dark complexion and my teeth do not stand out. For a reference – Eastern European here.
A bit odd to read women – who I assume are feminists – indignant about some other woman’s chest not being hoisted high enough.
The point others are trying to make is that the clothes will look much better if the undergarments fit properly.
Not only that, but supporting the breasts with properly fitting bras is GOOD for the back and overall posture. It’s certainly not a matter of “being hoisted high enough”. No-one’s suggesting they jack their breasts up under their chins or up to their shoulders.
My Lord, these folks wear their frumpiness and lack of style like a badge of honor!! No wonder they couldn’t stand Meghan — she has a modern, casual American-chic style that none of them could even wrap their minds around. For this lot–the frumpier, the more mammy-made it looks, the more they like it. The hemlines, bows, belts, patterns, and flat-out horrific cuts are atrocious. And as for Kate and her ex—they both had their eyes on aristocratic prizes, so marrying one another was not in the cards.
The sad part is they purposely wrinkled their clothes to appear posh.
This wedding isnt what i thought it would be. His guest list is new people. Did the old time families abandon them.
I think THIS particular subset of aristocratic women has zero fashion sense. There are lots of aristocratic women that do dress well. For example, one Rose Hanbury.