The Princess of Wales deserves the highest level of affection and respect from everyone in the land. But I fear that she’s onto a loser when she tells children to pay attention to her work, not her clothes, with her office saying that it will not be issuing details of the designers she is wearing.
Why on earth not? Any woman in the public eye is going to be judged on her appearance and let’s be honest: Catherine clearly loves to sport a good frock.
But there’s more to it than that. For a start, fashion is a billion-pound industry and, like her late mother-in-law, you could not get a better ambassador and role model for British designers than Catherine.
She always looks stunning, always (remember when Daniel Craig told her, “You look jolly lovely,” at a Bond premiere?), and if high end designers and the high street both get a boost when the POW wears their wares, good. It’s not as if she’s benefiting personally.
But there’s also the power of image, something understood not only by Princess Diana, but the late Queen. Elizabeth II almost always wore primary colours to make sure she could be seen and although everyone knew that she was happiest in a tweed skirt and headscarf, when it came to a state occasion, boy could she rock those frocks.
In my younger days I used to wonder why the Queen wore so many diamonds when she clearly wasn’t that interested in them: now I understand it was a message to the wider world about power and status. Wearing jeans would not have been the same.
No one thinks of the current Princess of Wales as a mere mannequin: she’s proved herself far more than that. Her courage in dealing with her cancer has been inspirational and her work on early child development will change lives. She’s given Prince William the stable family he never had growing up.
Nor does she ever come across as the slightest bit precious or spoilt: we see her yomping around in country clothes quite as much as a Jenny Packham showstopper. Clothes maketh the woman. Catherine, think again.