Kate Middleton’s Surprising Fashion Announcement

Like women the world over, I avidly follow news about Britain’s Princess Katherine of Wales – or Kate Middleton, as I think of her.  Back in 2011, I woke up early to watch her wedding to Prince William; I was thrilled for her each time she gave birth, felt devastated for her when she announced she’d been diagnosed with cancer in 2024, and elated when she announced she was in remission in January, 2025.

Kate’s always been a fashion icon. After seeing how good the brown boots she often pairs with dresses looked on her, I started doing the same.  Kate’s clothes and accessories typically sell out the moment she wears them.

As a Jewish woman, I attached extra importance to Kate’s outfit choices.

The British royal family has strict rules about what its members wear, and Kate adheres to them – like no skimpy outfits in public. Kate wears hats at formal events.  She – and other royals – are expected to look put-together and dignified.  That chimes with traditional Jewish attitudes towards modesty, where our clothes are seen as a way to reflect our inner self worth and signal to others that we don’t want to be judged by our external bodies but by the value we contain inside.

Now Kate’s made a surprising announcement: she’s asked Buckingham Palace to no longer provide details of the brands she’s wearing at most events.  A mainstay of fashion pages across the globe is suddenly going silent.

No More Information About Kate’s Outfits

“There is an absolute feeling that it (Kate’s work) is not about what the princess is wearing,” a source at Buckingham Palace told The Times.  “She wants the focus to be on the really important issues, the people and the causes she is spotlighting.  There will always be an appreciation of what the princess is wearing from some of the public and she gets that. But do we need to be officially always saying what she is wearing?  No.  The style is there but it’s about the substance.”

The style is there but it’s about the substance.

Perhaps Kate’s new outlook was spurred by her recent experience with cancer.  In a video she released last year, Kate explained that having gone through nine months of chemotherapy has given her “a new perspective on everything” and reminded her and William “to reflect on and be grateful for the simple yet important things in life.”  Clearly, for Kate, her outfit choices are not the central item in her very full life.

The Princess talking with a survivor

She prefers that the media focus on her work at hand – like meeting with 50 elderly Holocaust survivors on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and playing with children who have terminal illnesses at a children’s hospice – and not on where her clothes came from and how much they cost.

The Busy Princess

Kate’s announcement reminded me of one of my kid’s favorite books when they were little, Fit for a Princess by Risa Rotman. It explained the Jewish idea that every single person is created in the Divine image (Betzelem Elokim in Hebrew) with an important mission in life that only they can fulfill.  The book described one such person – a princess who doesn’t just sit around all day looking pretty. This princess is a busy princess.

At first, the busy princess dresses very fancily, but soon realizes this is impractical. When the busy princess plants trees, her gown gets in the way. When she climbs high on a ladder in her library to get a book, her crown falls off. She tries lots of different outfits and finally at the end of the book settles on a modern kids’ school uniform (with the fun addition of a superhero cape).  The lesson is clear: we each want to look good and attractive, but we also have crucial tasks to accomplish that are more important than any fashion.

Kate, always the trendsetter, is reminding us that your sense of royalty doesn’t come from the external crown or clothes you wear, it comes from embracing your inner worth and dignity as soul created in the image of God.