The photos in this post are from 2015, in case you’re wondering why the Princess of Wales looks so different. At this 2015 event, Kate wore a Tabitha Webb dress. While Webb was never one of Kate’s go-to designers, Kate does have several pieces in her closet/archives. Well, we cannot go one full week without some “British designer previously worn by Kate” announcing mass firings, bankruptcy or a complete shut down of their brands. Tabitha Webb is the latest. As I’ve been saying, Kate has an anti-Midas Touch.
Fashion designer Tabitha Webb admits that she’s always taken risks to achieve her ambitions, but it is the poor old taxpayer who’s been left to foot the bill – again.
I can disclose that Tabitha Designs Ltd – which has made brightly coloured clothes worn by the Princess of Wales, Holly Willoughby and Emilia Fox – has gone bust with debts of more than £700,000, including £50,000 owed to HMRC. The company, established in 2013, has been put into voluntary liquidation as a result.
‘Following a number of business challenges since the pandemic and declining sales as a result, the director of Tabitha Designs Ltd has made the difficult decision to enter liquidation,’ a spokesman for the liquidators confirms. ‘It is unlikely that liabilities to creditors will be repaid.’
Tabitha, 50, gave up a high-flying career in advertising to launch her range, because she was ‘frustrated by the selection of bags and accessories available’.
She later expanded into women’s clothing, producing mainly silk and cashmere outfits.
Kate wore one of her blue space-themed dresses to the London premiere of Shaun the Sheep: The Farmer’s Llamas in 2015. And for a video call with nurses during lockdown in 2020, she sported a Tabitha chevron cashmere sweater.
Many people argue that all of these closures, collapses and insolvencies have little to do with Kate. Perhaps, but at the same time all of these brands are collapsing, we’re being told that the “Kate Effect” is still a real thing, that everything Kate wears sells out, that her patronage makes a huge difference to these labels. And as we can see, Kate’s influence is either negligible or she’s like the Typhoid Mary of fashion – as soon as she wears a label, that label collapses. My incomplete list so far: Tabitha Webb is now insolvent; LK Bennett (one of Kate’s true favorites) has also collapsed into insolvency; Cefinn has completely shuttered; Seraphine is done; McQueen did mass layoffs and restructuring.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
If the Kate Effect is brands or labels going out of business then yep that’s the Kate Effect. I never believed that anything she wore sold out quickly because she has absolutely no fashion sense.
Kate wears clothes in a way that doesn’t make you think – oh where did she get that? I love it.
She wears clothes in a way that’s like – oh she has something on. That’s fine.
So – she tends to wear pieces from places that don’t make people think about the brand or make the brand actively seem stuffy or frumpy.
But I don’t think we can discount Brexit either.
Brexit is a good point, for like an LK Bennett which I think sells outside of the UK. But a lot of those small brands/labels seem to be vanity businesses, like an aristo daughter that sells dresses or bags or something, as you can see by the small amounts of the insolvencies. They’re not meant to be Chanel – they’re not going to expand and make millions from sunglasses or fragrance – they sell dresses mainly for women in small social circles. So if they have a bad year or two of sales, they can’t weather it and so they eventually go poof just like thousands of other similarly sized fashion labels or brands.
A lot of those labels also seem to be headed by people Kate and Pippa knew personally when they were on the husband-hunt circuit, so that’s why Kate would wear them. It wasn’t with a true aim to promote a brand, it was to get papped wearing them, look like they were fashionable and “in the know” and I bet most of the items were freebies anyway (If I was LK Bennett, for all the publicity I got from Kate I’d be sending her boxes and boxes of free stuff)
These were trendy companies and trends move on. Also, Brexit, the pandemic, cost of living crisis, and US tariffs made it a lot harder for small brands to build an international market. Sadly, I think US tariffs are probably killing smaller brands all over Europe.
Cosign @Lady Esther. I don’t know what made Samantha Cameron think she could be a fashion designer (forget OKA)–Cefinn’s prints were sooooo ugly. Plus overpriced.
Also? Worn by Camilla maybe more than Kate.
I think a lot of it is Brexit, tarriffs, and some of these business being vanity businesses.
Beyond that, Kate has bad taste. For example, awhile ago she wore a sweater from WNU(British line). The sweater was ugly. The thing that got me is that WNU is a great line and worn by a ton of fashion girls but specifically there tailored shirts.
I was baffled. Like why pick a sweater by a brand known for their shirts. Contrast that to Megan. It’s not so much that she is highlighting new pieces all the time but that when she picks a brand, she is almost always wearing something from what the brand does well. She gets it.
Her Mother picked her clothes. That’s why she was always covered in florals , lace and buttons. She’s drowning in frumpy.
Trying to say she’s an eternal style icon earlier this week/last week as they knew another label she wore was going kapout. Besides her wedding dress which was beautiful, she is known zero for her fashion style. Zee.Rooo.
Even her wedding gown was a CopyKATE. See Princess Margaret’s wedding gown, even down to the boob darts, done up with lace sleeves.
It seems pretty clear that it’s hard out there right now. So I wouldn’t put the blame entirely at Kate’s feet. She wore this dress how long ago? If anything, Kate’s keeness to copykeen Meghan’s style may have led her to wearing less of the clothes and brands she once did, which couldn’t have helped.
I don’t think the entire blame is Cant but I also don’t believe everything she ever wore sold out quickly or at all. You can’t call it the “Kate Effect” and not take some blame because the “Kate Effect” term was used to say she was the reason their stuff sold out which is not true. Blame for all.
I don’t recall Kate or anyone else in the family ever using the term “Kate Effect.” That was just another of the many, many fantasies and lies propagated by royal reporters who have no integrity or, I think in many cases, sanity.
No Mac I don’t believe anyone in the family used it but I think she liked it because it made her sound good and that she was fashionable which she is not.
Kate would almost always wear something from a year before and so the product was sold out because it wasn’t available. Or she would make it bespoke so the actual product wasn’t comparable.
She never sold out clothes like Meghan does because no one wants to dress in her mumsy prissy style.
@Susan Collins So you are saying Kate needs to be held accountable for lies made up by royal reporters because the lies were flattering? That’s quite a stretch.
Mac this isn’t a gotcha thing. You see it your way and I see it my way and never the two shall meet. This article isn’t about me and what I think.
Well said. It’s a forum for all views.
Have to add replying to Mac now – KM does piggy-back of this lie, as she has with so many others……
This is silly. Megan wore Serafine when she was pregnant and has worn McQueen on numerous occasions. There is plenty to criticize about Kate, but this a stretch.
I think the criticism is more that no actual Kate Effect exists since things she supports regularly go bankrupt (brands as well as her charities).
The press likes to pretend she has a Midas touch with labels selling out (when in fact, usually the clothing is many years old so already in low stock or sold out…nothing to do with Kate having worn it). Again, it’s a one-sided competition with Meghan because Meghan literally does make things sell out, whether her own products or companies she supports or wears. Plus Meghan/Sussex fans have raised gobs of money in grassroot-led fundraisers for Archie and Lili’s births or the 40 for 40 mentoring, etc.
Meghan has real fans and real followers while Kate/KP have purchased followers (again, the one-sided competition to have more followers than the Sussexes back in the day). And even the real fans that Kate has aren’t buying products or supporting charities that Kate wears/advocates for. I think that is the criticism – we’re being fed a diet of lies about Kate (in almost every area) by the British media.
Its not so much that Kate is to blame for these brands closing; more that her wearing a certain brand is no guarantee of that brand’s success – i.e. there is no real Kate effect.
Yes, wasn’t the “Kate effect” about people seeing her on a given day and rushing out to buy what she was wearing, or maybe something else from the designer. That wasn’t a thing, either.
Meghan has never been seen in public wearing Seraphine. In fact most royalists criticised her for not wearing a lot of maternity clothes. So this is not true.
I don’t remember Meghan wearing Seraphine at all just Kate and Pippa. One of the York sisters too. Alexander McQueen was Kate’s go to. I wondered if she would continue wearing AM after Sarah Burton left. The Givenchy from Sarah Burton her first dress for Kate from the label was her worse dress last year. Kate and her people regularly play up the billion pound fashion lie and complained about these stories that challenge it years ago. She definitely supported this myth. Who wouldn’t? It made her look like she contributed to the economy. They only downplayed it when Meghan came, the pandemic, and the last few years.
The wig was in full effect in those pics lol
Her hair looks so much better/healthier and her face looks sooooo different.
In regards to her face, I have no knowledge of any cosmetic touch ups or enhancement attempts that she may have tried, but I must say that both Kate and William do not look good facially and have not aged well. It seems to me like their faces are showing their true nature now much, much more than they used to. It’s not a good look for either of them. Jealously and hate will do that to a person. Kate often managed to pick the least attractive items in a designer’s line as well. (Many designer’s do have some good pieces). This goes back to her lack of style.
She needs to go back to that length. And wherever she got those extensions she needs to go back to that colour as well.
That photo makes you realise how much she has aged in 10 years
Or could it be partly be due to the fact that she so very rarely ‘works’ that she has no need to buy one off designer items so what’s the point?
Another one bites the dust! Oh Kitty – the British fashion icon – strikes again! The Kiss of Death to yet another British label. Carry on oh Queen of Clothing! Rise, Queen Kate!
Kaiser – don’t forget about the blue dress she wore in her engagement photos. I can’t remember the name but they also went bankrupt soon after. And this doesn’t even include charities that she “supports” that end up having to close.
Issa London. Kate never wore them after that one dress. I suspect that’s because Dodi Al-Fayed’s sister invested to try and save the company. They closed only 5 years after she wore the dress. The designer blamed Kate specifically for the failure.
In that case there was a Kate effect. Issa got a lot of attention and quickly expanded. But she was too popular too fast and couldn’t keep up.
https://people.com/royals/daniella-helayel-dhela-issa-interview-you-magazine/
Kate wore Issa London regularly pre engagement. Issa London was one of the names regularly included in predictions for her wedding dress. She wore the purple dress in Canada and Pippa wore the burgundy one to a wedding after the wedding. The pink and teal dresses she wore with William pre engagement were both Issa London. It was her favorite pre engagement label.
Her posture has always been atrocious. She really does enter a room face first.
Funny little fact, that dress K was wearing in 2015(?), it’s called “Meg” 🤭
My eyeroll is for the “high-powered woman finance/tech/advertising executive leaves Wall St./Silicon Valley/Madison Ave to start a fashion brand because they *just can’t find a bag they like” trope that is so absurd at this point. Really y’all, there are plenty of expensive purses out there to choose from.
Silly, huh? I think it’s the curse of the modern age, where every entrepreneur feels they must have an “origin story” to use as a basis for their company. Everyone must have a “long-lasting melon” story. They can’t just declare, “Hey, I wanted to branch out, so I did it.”
That photo really shows how much weight she has lost. What a difference now and not in a good way.
These photos really show just how much weight she has lost. She was very slender here but is downright gaunt now.
She would have been a few months postpartum here, after Charlotte. That’s the only time her face has ever filled out since high school, when she was pregnant.
Two things are true:
1. ETTD
2. Every label Kate champions w/o copykeening crashes and burns.
There’s also the brand Issa that made her engagement dress also shuttered.