Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Pretty in Pink

I know I haven't posted in a while, and I've missed somethings, but this should make up for it!

Kate looking pretty in pink at the Buckinham Palace garden party.

I LOVE her makeup - it's very soft - and her hat AND finally, her dress, it still stuns the second time around!

Here are some pictures, in some Kate looks quite animated, which is nice.









Read the full article by following this link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2151720/Kate-Middleton-recyles-Emilia-Wickstead-dress-Buckingham-Palace-garden-party.html

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

"William and Kate's royal wedding: the first anniversary": Written by Allison Pearson

I was sent this article (below) a few weeks ago now (so I'm a little late in putting it up), but nonetheless it's a great read and a great way to commemorate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's first year together. The article was written by Allison Pearson of the Telegraph.


"Such a small thing, but somehow it was a spot of ironing that summed up her first year as a royal. At the Dulwich Picture Gallery, back in March, the Prince of Wales and his daughter-in-law Catherine were invited to press some designs on to silk using an iron. Handed this familiar domestic appliance, the 63-year-old heir to the throne gave a quizzical, frankly alarmed look, like Elizabeth I being shown a potato for the first time. Onlookers held their breath: did Charles even know what an iron was? If so, he certainly didn't know how to use it.

The Prince began to lift the curious, hot, pointy thingy up and down like a dumbbell until Catherine showed him how it was done, moving her own iron with smooth, practised strokes. The former Miss Kate Middleton, who must have pressed more school blouses than the Prince has had state dinners, was clearly amused at her father-in-law's regal bafflement; the corners of her mouth twitched with mirth. 'Stop laughing at me!' protested Charles, but he was laughing too.

It's no surprise that in the course of her royal duties, from Canada to Catterick, Kate (or Catherine as we must learn to call her, though everyone forgets, even William) has shown the common touch. After all, until 20 minutes past 11 on that gladsome day, April 29 2011, she was a commoner herself. As the Archbishop of Canterbury pronounced William and Catherine man and wife, with the eyes of two billion people upon her, the 29-year-old daughter of former airline personnel from Bucklebury, Berkshire, joined an ancient, cantankerous institution that still runs according to rules that would make Queen Victoria feel at home.

The Duchess of Cambridge (terrible, frumpy title for a gazelle of a girl, but more of that later) has humanised and cheered up her new family simply by virtue of being herself. This is a royal who doesn't have to act normal, nice and straightforward because she is normal, nice and straightforward. If she shops in Reiss, Hobbs and LK Bennett, it's not a Marie Antoinette-does-the-high-street affectation; it's where she has always shopped. If she wears an outfit twice, and borrows a hat from her mother, that's what people do; and the trick of the new Wills'n'Kate monarchy, if they can pull it off, will be to remain royal while doing what people do.

Before her marriage, Kate and the Middleton family were mocked and patronised by a layer of society that says it believes in aspiration, but sneers reliably at the first sign of it. Kate and her younger sister Pippa were dubbed the Wisteria Sisters, because they were such ferocious climbers.

All criticism was stilled the moment Catherine stepped on to the red carpet outside Westminster Abbey. She was as lovely as a poem in her lace dress. 'Carole Middleton's revenge' is how one family friend describes the sight of the bride and her edible chief bridesmaid. Here was irrefutable proof, if any were needed, that being a class act has more to do with genes and decent upbringing than history and castles.
The Wisteria Sisters made the bona fide aristos in the abbey look like Cabbage Patch Dolls. As the designer Karl Lagerfeld remarked with delightful Teutonic frankness, 'Kate is beautiful and elegant. For the royals, the royal blood is not in demand any longer [which will be] better for the generation to come.' Certainly much better for the hair apparent. Canada may have Niagara Falls, but England now has Kate's Hair, a cascade of such astonishing natural virtuosity it should banish the Windsors' male-pattern baldness in one generation.

There's no doubt about it, on that incandescent spring day – gosh, has it really been a year? – 'Mrs Wales', as her new husband introduced her at their Buckingham Palace reception, gave a masterclass in poise and self-control. When Catherine smiled into the world's cameras all heaven broke loose. But there is a reason fairy tales end with the wedding. What next? Did Cinderella get bored with no housework to do, take up kick-boxing and amass a shoe collection? Was Mrs Darcy swallowed up by the dank protocol of Pemberley? There is no job description for a princess, only one rule: don't do anything wrong. Ever.

'Obviously, Kate gets nervous,' admits a friend who was in the abbey for the wedding. 'I think it's quite scary sometimes. She desperately wants to do everything right. I know she thinks about things very carefully, from her choice of clothes to what she says. Kate is very cautious and so is William. It can be pretty exhausting living in a world where your primary aim is never to put a foot wrong.' If that foot is wearing a certain brand of shoe it will sell out within hours on every high street; no wonder its wearer feels she has to be the soul of discretion.
A Kensington Palace insider confirms that Catherine is 'incredibly diligent. She comes to every event really well prepared.' During her first public speech at a children's hospice in Ipswich, although she did that telltale thing she does to steady herself – pressing the palms of her hands down – she was fluent and touching. 'I am only sorry William can't be here today, he would love it here,' she said in a cut-glass 1950s BBC announcer voice. By a quirk of our bizarre class system, Samantha Cameron, a baronet's daughter, has to talk like a middle-class mockney to be accepted, but, to be accepted, the middle-class girl has to talk like a baronet's daughter.

I'm not sure I buy the official line about Kate being a blushing ingenue in public. At school she was one of the best actresses of her generation; Marlborough friends recall a memorable turn she did as Cilla Black in a Blind Date spoof, complete with ginger wig and broad Scouse accent: 'Now then, luv, what's yur name? Have you cum fur?' Well, it could still come in handy on a royal walkabout.

All new wives have to find a way of dealing with the mother-in-law. For Catherine that problem is compounded by the fact that hers is dead, yet lives on in the hearts of millions. Comparisons with the late Princess of Wales were inevitable. Every time Kate's face lights up as she hugs a child, the headlines shriek: Is she the New Diana? No, is the short answer. Apart from both being very pretty, very tall, crazy about little kids and dolphins in the water, the two women could not be more different. 'Kate is quiet, stable, thoughtful and mature,' says a friend.

'She's a sort of anti-Diana. William loved his mother, but he hated everything to do with her public persona. The obsessive attention, the needy, destructive, on-off relationship with the media. He wants a life where that chaos is kept at bay.' Although he still gets hugely annoyed about press intrusion – such as the way the Middletons are a target for silly, malicious stories – they say his wife can soothe him like no one else. 'Kate is very calm. It takes a lot to wind her up.' The Duchess's default setting is serenity.
If there has been a single strategy for Kate's first royal year, it might be this: OK, think of what we did with Diana, now do the opposite. As William said during their engagement interview with Tom Bradby, 'Lessons have been learnt from the past.' Diana Spencer was practically a child bride when she married Charles, who was her senior in both years and education. As the world went bananas over Shy Di, no one thought to take care that the object of adoration didn't go bananas too. Kate and William, who have known each other since they were first-year students at St Andrews, are a team and better able to support and protect each other in their strange, overprivileged, overscrutinised existence.

Claims that Kate used Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, as a shoulder to lean on in the early months are dismissed by her friend as 'absolute nonsense' and 'PR guff from Charles's people'. It's William whom Kate listens to, and her own family. By and large, the couple's wish to keep everything as low-key as possible has been respected, at least for now. I was not surprised to hear it suggested that the pair didn't seek, let alone want, the ponderous title of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Prince William and Princess Catherine (all right, Kate) is what everyone calls them, but the jealous intricacies of royal hierarchy mean that it would be a threat to Charles's pre-eminence if William's wife was known as Princess and his was plain Duchess.
'Royal protocol is like wading through treacle,' explains a friend of the younger Prince. 'There were so many tensions in the run-up to the wedding between the way William and Kate wanted to do things and the way things are traditionally done. Clearly, there are only so many fights William can pick and, when it came to the title, he probably decided to let that one go.'

One way in which William is uncompromisingly showing the way in which the Wills'n'Kate monarchy will work is in his relationship with his wife's family. Since they've been married, the Cambridges have been on holiday twice with the Middletons, once to Mustique, before William was posted to the Falklands, and over Easter they went skiing together in the French Alps. Passengers on an easyJet flight to Geneva were startled to find the royal couple among their budget companions (another sign of how different things will be in the Wills'n'Kate era).

'I know William is very fond of Michael and Carole,' laughs a friend, 'but what other bloke do you know who goes on holiday with the in-laws twice in four months? Plus he spent new year at the Middletons' place in Bucklebury.' The message being sent out loud and clear is that the Windsors, whether they like it or not, are hitched to the Middletons. 'There is no way William is going to allow Kate's people to be kept outside the tent as they undoubtedly would have been in the past,' says the friend.

Not surprisingly, given their penchant for privacy, the newlyweds are happiest when they're able to live as an ordinary military couple in north Wales, just as Princess Elizabeth did with Philip in Malta for a brief, heady interlude after she married her sailor. She must have been able to taste freedom, like salt on her lips.

'They like nothing better than to be in Anglesey, cook a meal, put their feet up and watch a film,' says one insider. William goes off to the base (where he's a helicopter pilot), Kate potters about the five-bedroom whitewashed farmhouse, does the shopping, walks the puppy, cooks dinner. Certainly, this will be the first Queen of England to have been photographed pushing a trolley across a Waitrose car-park. One source said they didn't think she would feel comfortable having people curtseying to her. It will be interesting to see what kind of monarchy they evolve.

If there has been any criticism of the couple over the past 12 months it is that Catherine has got far too thin and that she and William are – whisper it low – a bit boring. A schoolfriend points out that, even as a child, Kate struggled to keep weight on because she was 'a 100mph kind of girl'. None the less, the fact that she must have dropped from an athletic size 10 to a waif-like size six causes alarm bells to ring because of what we came to know about Diana's eating disorder. 'Catherine doesn't think she's too thin,' says the friend. Hmm. The general view is that there is nothing wrong with Kate that having a baby won't put right, while she might fairly respond that her body is her own damn business. So far the only patter of tiny feet in the Wales household is from the spaniel puppy, Lupo, but we all know dogs and cats are baby substitutes for couples ready to become parents. As William and Catherine are scheduled to visit the South Pacific in September, the smart money is on a 2013 pregnancy.

As for being boring, scratch the irritable surface of that complaint and what you reveal is media frustration that the glamorous newlyweds, who are global box office, are keen to do their duty, but are not remotely interested in the kind of celebrity circus that caused William such pain during his childhood. Shrapnel from the War of the Waleses, his parents' excruciatingly public divorce, is embedded deep in the Prince's psyche. He won't play the game if he thinks Kate can get hurt.

The problem is that Wills'n'Kate are spectacularly good at being in the very limelight they'd rather avoid. Back in July, on their first state visit to Canada (known as the 'moving-on tour'), Catherine personally set back the nationalist cause at least a decade. What Commonwealth country in its right mind would want to sunder a connection with someone who looks such a knockout in both a black lace dress and a white Stetson?
In Ottawa, amid the sea of waving Union flags and screaming teenagers, Kate did something no royal has done before. When she moved towards a barrier to greet the crowd, a young woman held out her phone and the Duchess leant her head in close so the fan could photograph them smiling together. I doubt they will ever let her do something that natural, that charming – or that risky – again, but we had come an awfully long way from stiffly waving a white-gloved hand. Moving on, indeed.
Next stop on the tour was Hollywood, where mere movie stars queued to bask in the stellar glow of Mr and Mrs Wales. 'If you brought Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable back to life, Americans would not be more excited than they are by the presence of the Cambridges,' said Stephen Fry, and he wasn't exaggerating. Rather less eloquently, Nicole Kidman summed up the goofy effect William and Kate have on otherwise sensible mortals: 'They make me smile. I love them. I think they are amazing.' The ability to make people smile may not be a degree subject or an Olympic sport, but it is a gift. That's why the Prince of Wales, a man about as accustomed to laughing at himself as he is to ironing his own shirts, was so cheery that day with the iron in Dulwich. It's quite simple: Catherine is a pleasure to have around. When she smiles, people want to smile back.

The Queen, a canny CEO of the Family Firm for six decades, was quick to grasp the value of the new recruit. She paid her grandson's wife the compliment of taking her to Leicester on the very first stop of her Diamond Jubilee Tour. Separated by 50 years and a good six inches, Elizabeth II and Catherine Elizabeth make a surprisingly good double act. They are said to share the same sarcastic, dry sense of humour. In Kate's company, the Queen looks happy and, frankly, relieved. 'Thank God,' you can almost see Her Majesty thinking. 'Finally those fools found me a reticent, lovely, dutiful brunette to keep my monarchy on track for another half century!'

Perhaps even more impressively, Kate, who got her gold Duke of Edinburgh award at Marlborough, now enjoys the golden opinion of the testy old Duke himself. A royal insider says, 'Prince Philip thinks Catherine is just great.'

The British public, I suspect, would agree with him. Mrs Wales done great. It's only been 12 months and already we wonder: how did they ever manage without her?"

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/royal-wedding/9228996/William-and-Kates-royal-wedding-the-first-anniversary.html

LK Bennett on Ebay

If you want to dress like a duchess, or shop where one is known to shop, but you don't want sticker shock - then look no further then Ebay!

I have come across a really great discount shop on Ebay.co.uk for LK Bennett!

Check it out: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/l-k-bennett-outlet/Dresses-/_i.html?rt=nc&_fsub=1961790016&_sid=832183216&_trksid=p4634.m14&_pgn=3

Tuesday, 8 May 2012

Will and Kate Step Out for Advertising Dinner Event

Will and Kate stepped out for an advertising dinner event this evening - both looked very nice dressed in their respective outfits. Will was wearing a tuxedo and Kate was wearing a floor-length cream coloured dress.





Interestingly enough, Kate opted to wear her Jimmy Choo sandals - I believe we have seen them before - but this meant that she needed to go bare-legged, which is not in keeping with the Queen's dress code, which Kate usually follows religiously. It would be interesting to know how this would be received by the Queen and why Kate made this departure. I also wonder what made her choose the nail polish colour she did? It's very sophisticated, but still. It would be fun to pick her brain!


On another note, I have to say that Kate's latest hair colouring is not sitting well with me. It's very red this time around... ever since she stepped out in the blue tweed outfit last week. Sometimes it takes hair dye to settle into a more natural colour, as the colour fades in the first initial washes, but this colour twinge seems to be holding on tight! It could be the lighting that is effecting it, and turning it into something it's not, but I'm not a fan either way.

Also, it seems as though Kate is going through another eye-makeup phase, where she's now using less shadow.

But, of course she still looks nice!

Poor Pippa

The Daily Mail has speculated that a move might be in Pippa Middleton's future, following the scandal she was involved with back in April in Paris.


Unfortuntately after the incident, Pippa has been flying under the radar lately, and is even said to be contemplating a move to New York City! It's even been said that she's quit her job at Table Talk, a London based catering company following the incident.

This is both shocking and obsurd, and all of this somewhat tarnishes and shakes my faith in the Middleton clan. I mean James Middleton is still young and he's obviously enjoying his family's fame, as well as being well-to-do because of that family and living it up in London in a flat in Chelsea; so he comes off as a bit of a jerk. But now Pippa? Quitting her job over this matter seems to show that she's done something really wrong, and also suggests that she regards herself to be way more important than she actually is. I thought the Middleton's were made of sterner stuff?!

Pippa is not a Duchess, or a royal one at that, and nor is a major figure in any serious world-wide arena. She was with some bad people who made a bad decision but she should get on with her life, not run away from it! It seems that the investigation has even been dropped, so she's been given a second chance. There is more good than bad surrounding Pippa at this point, so she should plunge back into real life, or as real as her life is, and just move on.

I think the other horrible part of this story, if it is true, is that the States will be getting another modern-day version of a British exile, and another relative of the Royal Family!

I feel sorry for Kate. Between the initial scandal, which I'm sure she found embarrassing, and this speculated move? She must be feeling a bit uncomfortable. And what a time for a supposidly close sister to move away! Hopefully none of this is actually true.

Stay home Pippa!!! Go to Berkshire if you need to get away, and plan a comeback on English soil!!!

Read the article by following this link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2141165/Pippa-Middleton-Duchess-Cambridges-sister-to-New-York-gun-fiasco.html

A Really Good Read!

If you want a really good read then look no further then the Daily Mail's recent post about Will and Kate, written by royal author Penny Junor.

Click this link to read the article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2141046/Kate-Middleton-Prince-William-realize-possible-love-just-girl.html

Thursday, 3 May 2012

Kate's Shoe Style Criticised

Kate's choice in shoes came under fire the other day, when shoe designer Nicolas Kirkwood commented that she could get away with wearing different styles of shoes (basically taking more risks is more like it), and wearing more flambouyant styles.

What miffs me about this is that not everyone is going to have the same taste, AND, how odd would it look if Kate were to flounce around in a pair of Kirkwood's designs (see below)? 

Will and Kate have done many different things to show some solidarity in this world-wide recession, which I think is wonderful. But, by wearing an ostentatious shoe like the one shown below - designed by Kirkwood - I think it would send the entirely wrong message, and it wouldn't be her!

Finally, as a designer, Kirkwood should know that not everyone should wear everything. Kate is a duchess now - and a royal one at that! - and the designs that I have seen just wouldn't suit her. So how does that make sense? A good designer should know who their audience is, and if they don't like that audience then THEY should change.

Sorry for this little rant, I'm not usually so outspoke, but this article made me mad.


Read the full article in the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2138282/Duchess-Cambridge-Kate-Middletons-taste-shoes-slammed-designer-Nicholas-Kirkwood.html