I’d hoped to get this up yesterday; sorry about that. My excuse is that I completely forgot to work on this over the weekend until it was too late. I wish I could make up something better. I mean, I could have, but… there cannot be lies between us. Anyway, above is the slideshow for a longer, larger look, with links to our daily coverage and also to the organizations they visited, where possible. Please feel free to add your own in the comments, if you know of any organizations that I missed or that are working in the same spaces the Cambridges highlighted.
And here is the at-a-glance, from which I largely excluded William, except for the bonus shout-out to his signature moment:
To me, this was, sartorially, a screaming success. We did have some shoe issues, of course — t’was ever thus, Catherine; it’s how we know you have not been replaced by a clone. For example, knowing what we know now, which is that Kate wore the bottom left outfit for an impromptu SOS Village visit when they were grounded by weather in Lehore (that link takes you to their Instagram, for which Kate wrote the caption and signed it), it makes even less sense to me that she wore beige pumps with it when she could’ve had on the black flats all along. Maybe all her other shoe choices were on a different plane, or locked up with their larger tour luggage or something. That’s a small nit, though. Overall I think this went beautifully: comfortable, respectful, bright, well-fitted, and crisp. It taught me terminology I didn’t know, and opened up an interesting discussion in the comments of whether people of this culture feel it’s being appropriated when others wear these outfits (pinned, I think, to the rumor that Charles has a sherwani he wears at home that he loves). And at no point did I feel that the fashion overshadowed what they were doing there — something I do not believe happens during any of these tours, truly; for a lot of people, fashion is simply the way in, and honestly, I personally would not pay attention to royal tours without the entry point of this sartorial subject that I find so interesting. So there you go. In particular, I had no idea Pakistan was home to glaciers, so reading about and researching that outing was super informative for me.
They put up a little music video on Instagram as well, with a cool shot of them getting into the rickshaw:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B32BlN5lyIW/
I generally am not a huge fan of the music videos on Instagram, from either Cambridges or Sussexes; they are super cheesy, and I say that as someone who isn’t opposed to a little fromage. But I can’t deny that it was fun to get a bite-size recap of the visuals.
My favorites? Hmm. That Jenny Packham is obviously a showstopper, but for me it’s a tie between the blue shalwar khameez from Day 2 and the ensemble she wore to the mosque. My least favorite is probably…. the brown outfit, although I stand by my assessment in the slideshow that it was, among other things, intended as a canvas to let the ceremonial garb shine. But on its own, it did read a little bit like she’s a second-grade teacher on Tattooine.
And you?
