As summer draws to an end, there is a new royal fashion queen in town and it’s not who you might expect. In the quiet days of August, several polls have appeared telling us who the most stylish royals are and one woman keeps floating to the top of them. The Duchess of Cambridge and Queen Letizia of Spain might have got the most headlines in recent months but both of them lose out in the summer survey stakes to Sophie. The Countess of Wessex is now the most stylish royal in the world.
The Countess of Wessex has featured on several best dressed lists in recent weeks
That’s not just my opinion though I do think that Sophie looks great. But putting together the polls that have appeared in August hers is the name that keeps appearing in the top spots. And she’s leaving the rest of the royal fashion pack behind.
The most recent poll by Hello magazine gave us a top ten list of most stylish royals with Sophie at number five. She was just behind Queen Letizia with Kate at number three, Queen Maxima of the Netherlands at number two and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark in top spot. But when we add in the Vanity Fair Best Dressed list released just weeks before, Sophie’s dominance shines through. We didn’t expect to see Kate as she made the magazine’s Hall of Fame last year. But in the 2015 rundown, there were only two royals in the top ten and the Countess of Wessex was easily in charge here, taking fourth spot with Letizia in eighth. Such high flying ratings in two recent polls surely makes Sophie the current style queen of the royals?
And anyone who’s watched the countess in action in the past year or so won’t be at all surprised to see her rise up the ranks. Her wardrobe, filled with designs by names including Alexander McQueen, Emilia Wickstead and Diane von Furstenburg, has won plenty of admiring glances and positive comments. Her elegance often goes under the radar but she regularly pulls great looks out of the bag. It’s sometimes bemusing to see them passed over and gratifying to see her sense of style recognized at last.
But it’s also great to see a fifty year old leading the way because I’ve always thought these polls on style are slightly ageist. It’s almost automatic that Kate (33), Letizia (42), Mary (43) and Princess Madeleine of Sweden (33) get a nod but royal women in middle age or older are normally passed over. There’s little doubt that The Queen is one of the most stylish people in the world. Her clothes tick all the boxes on these surveys – classy, appropriate, well made and with enough new about them to catch the eye – and yet she’s rarely featured. Queen Paola of the Belgians and Queen Sonja of Norway are both in their seventies and seriously stylish but the chances of their featuring on a best dressed list are close to zero. The fact that Sophie is winning so many votes just after turning fifty is great.
So as we approach a new school term with plenty of royal engagements lined up for the early months of autumn there is a new head girl in the fashion class. All hail Sophie, the world’s most stylish royal.
Picture credit: The Commonwealth Secretariat/ Andrew Dunsmore via Flickr
style-less or stylish I believe it’s the first
She is stylish but unobtrusively so. Then again she does not get much publicity, alas.
She is lovely and very elegant!
It is a lovely and well deserved recognition of the elegance and style of the beautiful countess. I so agree with you about ageism. In my humble opinion, the fashion world including Hollywood are into eternal youth –which is nothing new. They have always looked to youth, often teenagers and young adults to promote their fashion. If anyone is of that certain age over twenty-five, her face will not grace on the front cover of magazines. However, I feel that in the world of royalty, things are a bit different as royals are not for a season, to use a gardening word, they are perennial! The BRF, in my opinion has a matriarch who at a very young age was being dressed by one of the all time great royal dressers, Mr. Normal Hartnell who also dressed her mother and many in the aristocracy. His ideas of fashion are timeless and it is no wonder that our Queen Elizabeth II is a style icon and remains one even if “the fashion magazines” do not recognize that she is, and, many within the BRF, seem to follow her lead. So, it is not a surprise that the beautiful Countess is finally being recognized as the style icon she is, although she and long been beautiful and elegant and will remain so.
The Countess is beautiful and dignified. She has chosen to wait until her children were a bit older to start taking on more royal responsibilities and does so now with such class. The Countess of Wessex and the Duchess of Cambridge have added much to the royal family.