Princess Anne in a crimson-plumed bicorn hat, swashbuckling through Westminster Abbey in a Napoleonic velvet cloak. Penny Mordaunt stealing the show in a teal two-piece that echoed the commanders’ wives in The Handmaid’s Tale, accessorised with a giant sword. Nine-year-old Prince George, a Nutcracker toy soldier come to life, resplendent in crimson and frogging.
As a catwalk for King Charles’s Britain, the coronation was undeniably spectacular. A feast of pageantry served up glorious visual entertainment during the long hours in Westminster Abbey.
Advance briefings from the palace had suggested Charles wanted a modern, pared-down event reflecting a 21st-century country in the grip of a cost of living crisis, but the optics of the clothes were surprisingly jazzy and eccentric. This was a grandstanding of Britain as the land of Mary Poppins and Strictly Come Dancing, of Hogwarts and Glastonbury, rather than the home of umbrellas and bowler hats.
