With the King’s Birthday Parade one week away, the fashion world is watching. It always does. And if the Princess of Wales’s recent record is any guide, she will not disappoint.
The date is set. The carriages are polished. The bearskins are brushed. And somewhere in the Kensington Palace wardrobe rooms, a decision has already been made that will be analysed, debated, and dissected before the last notes of the national anthem have faded from the Mall.
That is the nature of Trooping the Colour. It is the royal calendar’s most photographed morning. Every appearance is scrutinised. Every colour choice is logged. Every hat is debated. For a woman who understands the language of royal dressing as fluently as the Princess of Wales does, it is also an opportunity. And she has never wasted it.
Consider the pattern.
In 2023, her first Trooping the Colour as Princess of Wales, she wore a bright emerald green ensemble by Singaporean designer Andrew Gn — a long-sleeved dress with blue and silver buttons, topped with a Philip Treacy wide-brimmed hat. The colour was a deliberate double signal: green for the Irish Guards, of whom she had just been named honorary Colonel, and green for Wales. The brooch was the Irish Guards’ gold shamrock. The earrings were Princess Diana’s sapphire and diamond drops. Nothing accidental. Nothing casual.
In 2025, she refined the formula. A Catherine Walker aquamarine coatdress with an asymmetric ivory lapel, a Juliette Botterill hat in matching blue, and Queen Elizabeth’s Bahrain pearl drop earrings. The aquamarine matched precisely the teal plumes of the Irish Guards’ bearskin caps. The Catherine Walker choice carried its own weight — it was Diana’s favourite designer, the house that dressed her throughout her royal life and in which she was buried. Princess Charlotte appeared beside her mother in a near-identical shade. The effect was choreographed without appearing so.
This is what separates the Princess of Wales from merely well-dressed women. She thinks in layers. The colour speaks to her regiment. The designer speaks to her lineage. The jewellery speaks to the women who came before her. Each element does at least two things simultaneously. That is not styling. That is communication.
So what should we expect on 13 June 2026?
The Irish Guards connection will almost certainly hold. She has established it as a consistent thread and there is no reason to abandon it. Expect a colour that references the regiment — aquamarine, teal, or the deeper St Patrick’s blue are all within range. Catherine Walker remains the logical choice for formal ceremonial occasions of this weight, though she has occasionally surprised with other British designers at Trooping. Expect inherited jewellery. Expect a hat by a British milliner. Expect Princess Charlotte to echo her mother’s palette in some form — that particular conversation has become its own tradition within a tradition.
What I will be watching most closely is not the gown or the hat. It is the brooch. The Princess of Wales uses brooches at Trooping with particular intention — the Irish Guards shamrock, the inherited pieces, the carefully chosen symbols. A brooch at this event is never decorative. It is always a sentence.
Trooping the Colour is the one morning of the year when the entire royal family stands together in public, in full ceremonial context, before the largest crowd of the year. The Princess of Wales has used every one of her appearances to say something — about continuity, about her regiment, about the women whose jewels she wears and whose legacy she carries. She will say something again on Saturday.
The fashion world will be watching. It always is.
“A royal never gets dressed by accident.”
Vivienne St. Claire is Crown & Court’s Fashion & Style Correspondent. A former fashion editor with two decades cataloguing royal wardrobes worldwide, she believes every wardrobe choice is a political act.
“A royal never gets dressed by accident.”
