Prince William and Catherine

[Guest Fabiola]

Duchess of Cambridge's custom made hat for Zara's wedding - with the flourish she added herself

By Deborah Arthurs

Last updated at 12:41 PM on 5th August 2011

She may have recycled an old outfit for the wedding of Zara Phillips and MIke Tindall last weekend, but one thing that was new to Kate last Saturday was the magnificent hat she wore to the ceremony.

The sculptural headgear was made by British milliner Gina Foster, who created the one-of-a-kind piece especially for the Duchess of Cambridge.

Ms Foster revealed that the Duchess came into the boutique she runs in Kensington, west London, with the cream embroidered Day Birger et Mikkelsen brocade coat she planned to wear for the nuptials.

Perfect match: The neutral straw coulis complemented Kate's embroidered

Day Birger et Mikkelson coat - but Kate added a flower for added interest

The Duchess said she wanted 'something in a colour to match her outfit.'

After 30 minutes in the store, the Duchess settled on the elaborate circular 'Launceston Place coulis' design from Gina Foster's Kensington W8 spring/summer collection.

Kate requested the hat be made for her in a neutral straw colour, and put her own stamp on the style with the addition of a large flower she had added to the sinamay bow on the underside of the hat's brim.

Bespoke creation: The Duchess of Cambridge had her impressive hat made

to match her outfit by Kensington milliner Gina Foster

Although it received mixed reviews - some likened it to a Pringle crisp, while in the U.S. the hat was dubbed 'the potato chip' - the £410 hat, available to buy off the peg in navy, was thought by most to be the perfect complement to Kate's pale biscuit-toned embroidered coat.

According to a source at the store, Gina was 'thrilled and honoured' to have one of her creations worn by the Duchess.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2022787/Kate-Middletons-hat-Duchess-Cambridge-wore-custom-hat-Zaras-wedding.html

[Guest supertammie]

What is up with the crazy hat trend in England? I'd much prefer seeing some amazing shoes and handbags.

[Guest Char27]

its funny but suddenly there's no news about the royal couple all of a sudden hmmm...

[Guest Fabiola]

Kate Gets Household Advice from Prince Philip

By Simon Perry

Monday August 15, 2011 11:00 AM EDT

Dear Abby, move over.

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge may be getting advice on a variety of subjects – from exercise to interior decorating – from a most unlikely source: Prince William's grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, also known as Prince Philip.

The no-nonsense 90-year-old apparently has even toured William and Kate's home in London's Kensington Palace to offer design advice, such as suggesting natural woods and Welsh slate for their kitchen, reports the Sun.

His thoughts on the kitchen are "much more practical than the sometimes fanciful ideas of top designers," a source tells the paper.

Asked for comment, Buckingham Palace had none, because "private communications between family members that may or may not have happened are not something we are privy to or could comment on."

But a Palace source says: "The best teachers are those in the family, and they will be giving advice to help her settle."

Prince Philip has long had a reputation of being free with his advice. He frequently – and supportively – wrote William's mother Diana both in happy times and when her marriage to his son, Prince Charles, was collapsing.

http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20395222_20518259,00.html?xid=rss-topheadlines&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+people%2Fheadlines+%28PEOPLE.com%3A+Top+Headlines%29

[Guest Fabiola]

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited Birmingham where they were due to hold a

private meeting with the families of three men who died protecting shops and homes from

looters.

Kate in a brand new £1,375 outfit by Alexander McQueen and her Prada blue court shoes

[Guest Fabiola]

Is this what Kate will be wearing next spring? Gowns fit for a Duchess at Jenny Packham's New York Fashion Week show

By Tamara Abraham

Last updated at 9:16 AM on 13th September 2011

Jenny Packham was once best known for her bridalwear. But since the Duchess of Cambridge began wearing her gowns, her star has risen into the stratosphere and her looks are de rigueur for A-listers and royalty alike.

At her New York Fashion Week show last night, the designer didn't disappoint.

A front row including actress Mandy Moore watched a series of shimmering slinky gowns, reminiscent of the dress worn by Catherine, 29, to the ARK gala earlier this summer.

High collars and plunging V-necklines were both typical of the Duchess's style, while a palette of pastel blush and blue hues was lent energy by pops of sunset reds and oranges.

Lifting each look from the more obvious red carpet affair, Packham toned down dramatic floral embellishment with cap sleeves, while fuller-skirted designs featured lingerie-inspired lace trim.

The Duchess of Cambridge has already worn Jenny Packham three times since she wed Prince William in April.

As well as the ARK gala, she was seen in two dresses by the designer on the Royal tour to Canada and the U.S.

She chose a yellow sundress for her arrival in Calgary on July 7, and a hand-painted floral frock to attend the polo in Santa Barbara, California, two days later.

Packham is also a hit with the A-list (and their stylists of course). Her dresses have been seen on Sandra Bullock, Vanessa Hudgens, Angelina Jolie, Emma Roberts and Ashley Tisdale.

Also showing at New York Fashion Week yesterday were Donna Karan, Carolina Herrera and First Lady favourite Barbara Tfank.

The evening's shows included big hitters Betsey Johnson and Marc by Marc Jacobs, while rookie designer Avril Lavigne added some star power to her debut Abbey Dawn show with the help of 14-year-old Kylie Kardashian.

In a smaller presentation celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe also showed her latest collection of typically Seventies-inspired pieces.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2036526/Kate-Middletons-spring-wardrobe-Jenny-Packhams-gowns-fit-Duchess-Cambridge.html

[Guest Fabiola]

Red hot: Kate, wearing a pillar-box red maxi-length evening gown by Beulah London with billowing

sleeves, and Willam at the black tie do held at St James’s Palace in London by 100 Women in Hedge

Funds

[Guest Fabiola]

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark during a visit to the UNICEF Emergency Supply Centre on November 2, 2011 in Copenhagen, Denmark

[Guest Char27]

you know i usually love what Kate wears.. however this red although it pops i felt it made her look a lil masculine and well boxy ... thought Mary's outfit here was very elegant .. regal.. cut was right and the color was soft ... oh well.. my opinion anyways..

thanks so very much for sharing the pics its been awhile since we've seen much of the royals..

[Guest sprinkle_kitty]

Oh my gosh Princess Mary!!! I never imagine the Mary and Fredrick meeting with William and Kate ^^

[Guest PinkWaffles]

I wonder when they'll start having kids~

[Guest Fabiola]

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were holding a dinner at

St James's Palace for the National Memorial Arboretum Appeal, of

which the Duke is patron

Wearing a silver Grecian-style gown, by designer Jenny Packham, draped over one shoulder and

gently gathered in at the waist

[Guest Char27]

while the dress is gorgeous i really really wish she would gain some weight ... she looks sooo sooo and i mean soooo thin

[Guest Fabiola]

Can Kate escape... The Curse of Kensington Palace?

One queen died from smallpox a week after moving in. Another lost 17 children. Few marriages survive...

By Glenys Roberts

Last updated at 11:37 AM on 10th November 2011

After days of agony, Queen Caroline finally succumbed to a gruesome, lingering end from blood poisoning. She was suffering from an umbilical hernia as a result of her eighth pregnancy.

Even though doctors crowded round in despair, they were not able to examine her because it was deemed offensive to royal dignity. Finally, they steeled themselves to have a look at the section of bowel protruding through her abdomen.

But rather than push it back, they took the fateful decision to chop it off.

Eight days later, Caroline, wife of George II , breathed her last. This horrifying deathbed scene took place in 1737, but Caroline - once the glamorous chatelaine of Kensington Palace - was not the only tragic royal figure to be associated with this royal residence.

In its 320-year history, its walls, courtyards and corridors have been haunted by so much tragedy the wonder is that Prince William and Kate have now decided to make it their marital home.

According to the chief curator at the Historic Royal Palaces, Lucy Worsley, there have been at least seven princesses associated with Kensington who were either 'sad, bad or even mad'.

The litany of disasters is such that it may as well be cursed - and there is even a ghost to boot.

These days, everyone recognises the palace's majestic facade because of the enduring sight of the sea of flowers left outside the gates after Princess Diana's tragic death in 1997.

But behind those elegant portals, William's mother never knew marital happiness. Nor did his great-aunt Princess Margaret, who lived her own chequered life in the same 21-room three-storey apartment that the young royal couple have just started renovating.

During the Sixties, the apartment bore witness to extraordinary glamour as Margaret and her photographer husband, Lord Snowdon, played host to celebrity friends such as ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev and The Beatles, who would gather in the kingfisher-blue drawing room for singsongs round the piano.

After the couple's bitter separation, those same rooms saw their share of scandal, with Princess Margaret's visiting suitors including actor Peter Sellers and her toyboy Roddy Llewellyn.

But, then, Kensington Palace has witnessed plenty of scandal and tragedy since its very beginnings more than three centuries ago.

In 1690, William III and Queen Mary commissioned the great architect of St Paul's, Sir Christopher Wren, to remodel and extend a house they'd bought in Kensington to escape 'the grime' of the Palace of Whitehall, where monarchs traditionally lived.

In those days, Kensington was known as a rural retreat. It was said by one contemporary to 'cure without medicines' because of its clean air.

Alas, this did not prove to be the case for poor Queen Mary. Scarcely had the royal couple moved in than she contracted smallpox. Within a week she was dead, aged just 32.

From a gruesome end to a tragic early death: Queen Caroline (left) and Queen Mary II both died

early behind the palace walls

The public loved Mary for her glamour - so much so that there were Diana like outpourings when she died. John Evelyn, the great diarist, said 'never was there so universal a-mourning'.

But the palace jinx had only just begun. In 1702, William III himself died and was succeeded by Mary's sister Anne, an even more tragic figure associated with Kensington Palace.

Poor Queen Anne was married to the extremely boring George of Denmark. 'I have tried him drunk, I have tried him sober and there is nothing in him,' remarked his own uncle, Charles II .

Despite his lack of charisma, Anne underwent 17 pregnancies in an attempt to provide an heir to the throne, but none of her children reached adulthood.

Happy: Princess Margaret in a drawing room in Kensington Palace which is painted in one of her

favourite colours, but the walls of the palace are tinged with a gruesome history

Some she miscarried, some were stillborn, others died in infancy of smallpox.

The longest living was Prince William, who succumbed to a mystery ailment at the age of 11.

His worn-out, heartbroken mother followed him to the grave 14 years later, aged just 49 and riddled with gout.

Anne's failure to produce an heir meant the end of the Stuart dynasty. Though she had more than 50 close blood relatives, all were rejected because they were Roman Catholics.

Instead, in 1714, the Hanoverians came to the throne in the portly shape of George I, Anne's closest living Protestant relative.

Should you climb the king's great staircase of Kensington Palace today, you will see portraits of valets, maids, even babies, all commissioned by George I in an attempt to dispel the curse hanging over the place and make it more welcoming than St James's Palace - which was always a rival for the royals' affections.

(William and Kate themselves were said to have looked at an apartment at St James's Palace before deciding upon Kensington instead.)

George I's family life was a disaster. When he moved to London, he left his unfaithful wife Sophia locked in a remote German castle, and there were rumours that he had her lover hacked to death.

The extensive renovations George I commissioned gave Kensington a brief period of glamour after decades of tragedy, but he didn't live to see its best years.

Only after his death in 1727 did its walls ring with the sound of influential chatter, when his daughter-inlaw Caroline, Queen Consort of George II , became chatelaine.

Caroline, known as the fattest and funniest princess of all as well as the cleverest, hosted salons even more glorious than Princess Margaret would over two centuries later.

A true intellectual, she wielded political influence over Prime Minister Robert Walpole, installed a palace library and commissioned busts of England's monarchs.

But the palace curse continued with her hernia and agonisingly slow death. The next princess to live there was Charlotte, who was born in 1796 when George III was on the throne.

Charlotte was the daughter of the foppish Prince Regent, who would eventually become George IV .

But her father hated her mother, Caroline of Brunswick, and claimed only to have had sex with her three times before he banished her to Kensington Palace.

George, however, loved his daughter. And when Charlotte married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg- Gotha with full pomp and ceremony in 1816, wearing a wedding dress that cost a staggering £10,000 (£600,000 in today's money), he was delighted because it looked as if the succession would be assured.

But just one year later, at the age of 21, Charlotte died along with her stillborn son after a 48-hour labour.

Grieving crowds came out on the streets, and her ashamed doctor committed suicide. Princess Charlotte's death left an alarming question mark hanging over the succession, sparking the so-called 'baby race'.

For though her grandfather, George III had produced 15 children, none of their offspring was legitimate. An order was issued that all his sons must leave their mistresses, take wives and hurry to provide the throne with suitable heirs.

The race was won by his fourth son, Edward, Duke of Kent, who was married to a German princess.

Their daughter Victoria, born in 1819, would become Britain's longestserving monarch. Victoria lived in Kensington Palace throughout her childhood, but even she could not overcome its aura of unhappiness.

She was brought up there according to a draconian method which came to be known as the 'Kensington System', designed to isolate her so completely that she would always be dependent on her mother - and her mother's unsavoury lover, the equerry Sir John Conroy.

Little wonder that the day Victoria became Queen, she moved straight into Buckingham Palace. Two years later, she married Prince Albert, whom she had met while still living in Kensington.

Though he, too, died early, their loving marriage was one of the few propitious events associated with the palace. For though its next prominent royal occupant, Princess Margaret, spent £85,000 on its haunted halls (more than £1 million today) before she moved in in 1960, its glory days were again short-lived.

After Margaret's marriage crumbled in the Seventies, she lived there alone till her death in 2002 - her only regular company was a ghost known as the mysterious lady in blue.

Her neighbour during these years was Princess Diana, with whom, as a royal rebel, she should have had much in common.

But Margaret's last years saw her reduced to peeping from behind the net curtains as Princess Diana brought home her own lovers in the boot of her car past Margaret's apartment.

And though Margaret could not see the event from her windows on the other side of the courtyard, she certainly knew of one the most poignant occurrences which took place in the palace under Diana's auspices, while William was growing up: the clandestine burial of the stillborn daughter of Diana's best friend, Rosa Monckton, in the palace's back garden.

While £1 million will be spent by William and Kate on refurbishing the faded decor of Margaret's apartment, these are just a few of the unhappy memories the new couple will have to banish in order to usher in another gilded period.

We surely wish Kate will have better luck than most of the princesses who have lived there.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2059668/Kate-Middleton-curse-Kensington-Palace-Can-escape.html

[Guest Fabiola]

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge shops at a Tesco supermarket in casual sweater and jeans

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge meets with members of the media during a reception held at Buckingham Palace in a $2200 silk dress by Mulberry

[Guest Char27]

hmm granted royalty still dont see why a $2200 dress is necessary then again i dont have that kind of money to spend but hypothetically lets just say i did.. i doubt i would spend that much on a silk dress..that well in my opinion was all that to begin with.. preferred most of her previous out fits really.. oh well to each is their own .. lol

[Guest Fabiola]

Duchess keeps it short and sweet on a night out with the in-laws

Concert for The Prince’s Trust on Tuesday (December 6)

at Royal Albert Hall in London, England

Kate stepped out in a Zara dress which was a daring change.

And, in a departure from her last public appearance, when Kate

wore a £1, 400 Mulberry dress, the mini cost only £69.99.

[Guest Char27]

perhaps she realized wearing a 1400 british pound dress was really pushing the limits.. but its nice to see she is trying something well .."normal" dare i say.. thanks for sharing the pics

[Guest Fabiola]

The Sun Military Awards

at Imperial War Museum

on December 19, 2011

in London, England

The Duchess arrives on the red carpet with her husband, Prince William and Prince Harry

Kate showed off her toned muscular arms in a £4,000 black strapless dress by her favourite

couture label, Alexander McQueen

[Guest Fabiola]

Pre-Christmas Lunch at Buckingham Palace

The Royal couple, among the close relatives invited to the event hosted by the Queen, were all smiles as they were spotted on their way.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their way to attending a pre-Christmas lunch at Buckingham

Palace

Prince Charles, Camilla and Harry head to the event

Princess Anne with husband Timothy Lawrence also attended the lunch

Mike Tindall and Zara Phillips

Daniel and Sarah Chatto