Princess Kate might love to upcycle her old gowns—a trick from Princess Diana's playbook—but no one does archival fashion like Princess Anne. The 75-year-old royal looked elegant in an ivory dress coat as she arrived at Windsor Castle for the Nigerian state banquet on Wednesday, March 18, and her outfit dates all the way back to the 1960s.
The Princess Royal has a penchant for wearing decades-old coats and dresses, and her appearance at Wednesday night's banquet was no different. As pointed out by my good friend and royal Instagrammer Lauren Parkinson, Anne was wearing a long coat with cutout detail on the sleeves that she wore in 1969. The coat originally had an embellished collar to match the sleeves, but the Princess Royal has since had it altered into a plain, pointed style.
She originally wore the cream-colored coat open, paired with a long gown featuring the same detail as the sleeves underneath—although it's unclear if the Princess Royal wore the dress under her buttoned-up coat this time.
While she wore her hair piled up in a curled style in the '60s, she topped her typical twisted style with the Meander Tiara on Wednesday night. The diadem features diamonds in a Greek key design and was given to Queen Elizabeth by her mother-in-law, Princess Alice.
The petite tiara holds an especially sentimental meaning for Princess Anne's family, as her only daughter, Zara Tindall, wore it for her 2011 wedding to Mike Tindall in Edinburgh.
Princess Anne finished off her look with Queen Mary's City of London choker, a thick pearl and diamond design that was gifted to Anne's great-grandmother, Queen Mary, by the City of London in 1893. It was inherited by Queen Elizabeth, who never wore the dazzling piece, and it remained out of public view until Princess Anne wore it in the early 2000s.
As for the rest of the Royal Family, Princess Kate debuted a green Andrew Gn gown in the color of Nigeria's flag, pairing it with Princess Diana's favorite tiara, Queen Mary's Lover's Knot. And Queen Camilla dazzled in the Belgian Sapphire Tiara and an embroidered ivory gown by one of her favorite designers, Fiona Clare.
