As Marie Claire reported on recently, Queen Camilla and the Princess of Wales have a “unique relationship”—after all, there are only a handful of people in the world who know what it’s like to be married to someone who will one day be King (or now is King).
Their bond seems to extend to more than just an understanding and a knowing of each other’s experience, as People reports that the two are a “unit together,” working to perfect the art of diplomatic dressing. Case in point: last week, at the state visit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee, Kate wowed in head-to-toe red alongside King Charles, Camilla, and Prince William as the foursome greeted their guests at the Horse Guards Parade. She wore a bespoke structured red cape by longtime favorite Catherine Walker, and beneath it, another Catherine Walker look—a perfectly matching dress with a prominent bow, which she wore previously to her Christmas carol concert back in 2021. “It was the daytime equivalent of wearing a ballgown,” People reports. “It demanded attention.”
In contrast, to the same event, Camilla wore a demure dark blue wool dress and matching jacket with frayed edges by Anna Valentine—“a much more discreet look considering her status,” the outlet writes. “However, the combined look of both women was actually a feat of flag dressing, perfectly nodding to the Taegeukgi symbol on the flag of South Korea, which is both red and blue.” To complement their wives, Charles and William both wore navy jackets and white shirts—a red tie for William and a blue one for Charles.
And this was no accident: “I think it definitely cemented how synchronized the four of them are,” said Bethan Holt, fashion director at The Telegraph. “There is a real sense of them being a unit together, and the flag dressing really underlined that.”
Then, at that evening’s state banquet, it was Camilla’s turn to be the standout. “Kate looked stunning, but Camilla really went bold in that red velvet gown,” Holt said. “I think Kate looked incredibly regal in the day; I think Camilla looked like a new kind of regal in the evening. You could feel this kind of exchange going on between them, which I think is really interesting.”
Kate wore the Queen Mother’s Strathmore Rose tiara—one not worn publicly since the 1930s—and Camilla wore the Burmese Ruby tiara for the first time. “That was Camilla’s big fashion moment in the evening, although obviously everyone was talking about Kate’s tiara, so that did take away from it a little bit, but for the most senior royal woman to be in such a fashion look, it felt like a departure, definitely,” Holt said.
The South Korea state visit was nowhere near the first time the two women have worked together fashion-wise. At Charles’ Coronation last May, when it came to Camilla’s Bruce Oldfield dress and Kate’s Alexander McQueen look, “Kate and Camilla together were involved,” royal embroiderer Chloe Savage told People at the time.
They’ve also struck a finely tuned balance between Kate’s increasingly bold style choices and Camilla’s more conservative approach to fashion: “I feel like Camilla is dressing the part, but I don’t think she has any ambitions to be kind of a bold fashionista, the center of attention,” Holt said, “whereas Kate knows this is part of her role.”
