If someone came to me and said, “JESSICA! We will give you sixty-five dollars if you could name two things Meghan would be likely to wear on this visit to South Africa,” I’d currently have an extra $65, because I definitely would have have, “something olive green” and also “a trench-inspired something or other.” Friends, we have our “something olive green” — in this case, a shirtdress by a brand called Room 502, which is a brand Sophie Theallet started in Montreal after she literally moved to Canada because she hates Trump so much, and which donates a portion of its proceeds to charity — and also our “trench-inspired something or other” in the form of this Banana Republic dress. (I wish she’d worn it in the white color BR is showing, actually, but maybe she doesn’t want to deal with the “white after Labor Day?!?!?!?! MY STARS!!!!” contingent, even though Labor Day isn’t a British holiday. Do the Brits have a rule about not wearing white in autumn? Educate me. I just think the white version feels like it would have been more crisp, not that this is not crisp. You know what I mean.)
I am also beginning to think that Olive Green With a Waist Tie is Meghan’s most favorite thing right now, like how Kate CANNOT RESIST a blue-and-white-striped shirt. We’ve all got That Thing we can’t stop buying and we all justify it by saying, like, “excuse me, this is clearly different than my other one BECAUSE IT’S KNEE LENGTH, duh, Harry.” (Mine Thing is technically jeans and jeans give you a LOT of justification wiggle room with rises and washes and whatnot.)
To me, these are both wholly reasonable but not thrilling, which seems to be the MO for this trip. I will be interested to see the if Meghan’s post-maternity-leave UK wardrobe continues to be so (generally although not entirely) reasonably priced; that’s definitely been very different from their trip to Australia etc, and I think that part of that is due to the fact that this is not an official State Visit and is ergo a bit more casual, but I also think it’s partially a course-correction on the way to finding her wardrobe sweet spot.
Engagement-wise, let me Informatively Caption you: The trench-dress was for, and I quote, a “roundtable discussion with the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), of which she is Patron,” the topic of which was “challenges faced by young women in accessing Higher Education,” and where she announced several new scholarships. That’s nice! And the olive green shirt dress was for a trip to an organization called Action Aid (which is one of Chaz’s patronages), to learn about combating gender-based violence, and then (I think) a private visit with some school-age girls. (There was a long break between the two events; the first one was at like 9:30 a.m., the second kicked off at 1:30, hence her having time to go back to home-base and change after noodling around, presumably, with the bebe for a while.) All right, everyone — keep up the good work, one day to go!
STOP THE PRESSES — just as I was about to publish this post, news broke that the Sussexes are suing the Daily Mail for (I think) publishing that letter Meghan sent to her father. (And possibly also her copyrighted images from The Tig?) That is BIG NEWS — I said, “HOLY SHIT” aloud to Twitter when I saw it — and should get very, very, very interesting.
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