Day 5: Kate wears cream Sarah Burton dress in Charlottetown

· Will and Kate at Charlottetown, P.E.I.
· Kate’s wears Sarah Burton nautical dress
· Inspired by ‘Anne of Green Gables’

Today Kate and William visited Charlottetown, the capital city of Prince of Edward Island.  The city is known as the “Birthplace of Confederation” after the historic 1864 Charlottetown Conference which led to Confederation.  The royal couple began their tour of the city with a stop at Province House.

Kate’s outfit:

Kate chose to wear a nautical-themed outfit, which according to journalists on Twitter, was designed by Alexander McQueen’s Sarah Burton.  As WKW reminds us, we saw Sarah Jessica Parker wearing in the same dress, albeit in a different colour, back in 2006.

Here’s a montage of Kate’s outfit for this leg of the trip:

As you can see from the picture, Kate’s dress appears to have a cable-knit pattern repeating through the material (though the material does not look heavy like wool.)  Kate’s silk scarf, if you look closely, has a cute little anchor printed on it, but hidden away. Kate chooses to accessorise the cream and navy dress with her thin silver (and as yet, unidentified) bracelet, navy pumps (which we think are from Barratts) and her earrings that match her engagement ring.

Kate’s dress:

Kate’s gorgeous dress Kate’s dress causes controversy amongst Kate fans yesterday!  The garment had been officially described as a ‘pencil dress’ by British designer Sarah Burton (Creative Director of Alexander McQueen).  However, the dress does not have a pencil skirt, but rather, it has a fluted skirt that flares out at the bottom.  At first, many thought Kate had changed her mind last minute and worn a different dress leading Clarence House to release the wrong information, but as @RoyalReporter shared on Twitter, Clarence House only confirm a dress once they see Kate is wearing it to ensure this doesn’t happen. We think it’s just a poor choice of words and WKW told us that after Googling, it does appear McQueen have a very liberal definition of a ‘pencil dress’.

So, with that settled, more about the dress:

The National Post describe Kate’s dress very eloquently:

“The dress fabric has a subtle repeating cable-knit stripe motif and dark trim on the hem, collar and at the waist. It’s a little nautical, a little 1920s bourgeois tennis court.

To my eye Kate’s retro, country club style is a nod to both the era of Anne of Green Gables and to Prince Edward Island’s grand Victorian and Edwardian seaside resort heritage, as epitomized by Dalvay-by-the-Sea (a Queen Anne structure built ion 1895 and featured in Road to Avonlea).”

Picking up on the “Anne of Green Gables” comment above, we noticed a tweet by Royal Photographer @RegalEyes:

If you take a look at the dress Regaleyes is referring to, you can certainly draw some parallels:

The ‘Anne of Green Gables’ story was written by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery in 1908 (set in 1878) and based around her own experiences on Prince Edward Island.  It is suggested that Kate requested the stop-off on the tour of Canada as this was one of her favourite books when growing up.

Back to Kate’s style:

Kate’s hair:

As you can see from the pictures above, Kate is wearing her hair up, pinned back with soft curls falling around her neck. We assume this is because of the drizzle and rain, though it could be to accentuate the sailor-esque neckerchief on the dress.