Friday 28 October 2016

Letizia, Queen of Casual


Queen Letizia at an audience at the Zarzuela Palace 
(photo Casa Real Twitter)

Letizia likes to keep it modern. Along with her husband, she is known to try and assert a modernising influence on royal life. It doesn't always work. For a set of audiences on October 27th, she chose a very casual look and adding heels didn't quite cut it. Can a queen really be too casual?



Letizia was holding audiences at the Zarzuela Palace when she chose this black and white combo. Up close, it's clearly expensive. At first glance, it does look ever so slightly like a tracksuit with heels.



We got a short sleeved black top and black trousers with white stripe that seemed to take consort casual to new heights. Thankfully, it was heels rather than flats or we might really have been forgiven for thinking that Letizia was on her way to the supermarket for the weekly shop when someone reminded her that there were things to do before the royal agenda was marked complete again.





It's not that she doesn't look good because Letizia falls into that lucky group of people who can pull off the proverbial seeming stylish in a bin bag thing. But these are royal audiences with the organisations turning up for a moment in the regal sun - that raises the question of whether a queen can be too casual.  


No one wants our royals wearing crinolines and corsets - though, let's face it if the designers say that's in, we'll get a regal smattering of them. But we do want a bit of, well, royalness about them. This outfit would get everyone in the office muttering under their breaths about the high flyer wearing it always being one step ahead of the fashion pack but for a royal audience, it just feels a bit too low key.




The audiences themselves were important events - highlighting the work being done to eradicate ovarian cancer with another focused on people involved in bringing education and technology together. And there is a great old royal trick of wearing something stand out for an engagement that might otherwise be forgotten to get attention for important causes that might not come automatically. 




Let's give Letizia the benefit of the doubt and say she was trying to promote two causes close to her heart. And then hope that she puts this outfit to the back of the wardrobe and gets slightly less casual next time round.

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