The late Duchess of Kent approached her wardrobe with an discipline that would not be out of place in a Paris atelier. According to her daughter, Lady Helen Taylor, Katharine’s love of clothes was matched only by her insistence on renewal: at the close of each season, everything went.
Rather than archive gowns, box up dresses or rotate outfits in the modern royal manner, the duchess sold the lot – a complete seasonal clear-out undertaken to fund an entirely fresh selection. Lady Helen told Tatler that her mother relied on the psychological lift that well-chosen clothes provided before public duties, believing that the right outfit carried its own quiet authority.
The magazine’s January issue features a tribute to her style, anchored by Lord Snowdon’s striking 1980 portrait of the duchess dressed in high lace and sapphire drops, the photograph capturing a woman who understood how presentation could both flatter and fortify.
Even in later years, when she preferred the simpler moniker “Mrs Kent” and quietly withdrew from royal engagements, Katharine’s instinct for dressing remained unmistakable. Whether presenting trophies on Centre Court or attending family weddings, she struck a balance between formality and warmth, favouring elegance that never tipped into ostentation.
Her friends insist her wardrobe habits were not, as some might imagine, rooted in extravagance. One confidant described her to royal historian Hugo Vickers as the rarest kind of royal — confident without vanity, stylish without pretence. Clothes, Lady Helen suggests, were not trophies but tools: chosen, worn, and ultimately released to make way for something new.
The duchess’s funeral in September, attended by the King and senior members of the Royal Family, marked the first Catholic service for a royal in modern memory. It also served as a reminder of a woman whose relationship with style ran deeper than fashion cycles. For Katharine, a wardrobe was not a museum – it was a living, seasonal expression of the self.
