If anything will grow a person up really quickly, it’s the prospect of marrying into the royal family. Whether you’re Diana Spencer at 19 or Kate Middleton at 28, a potentially impending proposal from your prince (your literal prince, as in, you know, prince of the United Kingdom) will make you reevaluate everything in your life—including, in Kate’s case, her look.
The Mirror reports that Kate “significantly changed her appearance to become more appropriate” before Prince William proposed in 2010. William and Kate met as first-year students at the University of St. Andrews in 2001 (as we will soon see played out in part two of season six of Netflix’s The Crown); by 2003 they were a couple, and save for a rocky few months in 2007, were together until William ultimately popped the question in 2010. As with all of us, Kate’s style evolved and changed from 2003 and her early days of dating William to 2010 and her engagement announcement that November 16—the moment when the Kate Middleton effect ultimately began with the iconic blue Issa wrap dress she wore that day, an effect that has continued since.
