03 June 2011

Queen Elizabeth must wonder sometimes what the fashion world is coming to

Designer Katharine Hamnett receives her CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire*) award from the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
"I wasn't nervous to meet the Queen at all," Hamnett told us this morning. "I wanted to put the message across that sustainable clothing can be glamorous, so I wore an organic cotton dress by Katharine Hamnett and a fabulous Philip Treacy hat made from cockerel feathers - which is a bi-product of food waste."
The rest of the story is at Vogue.  Photo credit PA Photos.

*Commander of the British Empire is an order of chivalry enstated by King George V in 1917. The title of Commander is third in seniority, the two titles above it (Knight Grand Cross and Knight Commander) automatically make the individual a knight or dame.

12 comments:

  1. By some measures, the young lady was dressed conservatively. Type "royal hats" into images.google.com...

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  2. Certainly. And just to clarify, I'm not mocking Ms. Hamnett - just musing about what must go through the Queen's mind.

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  3. I didn't figure you were. I am, though. :)

    At the Queen's age, she's probably thiking "I'd love to get off these feet. My back is killing me."

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  4. The queen is very, very cool. If she weren't, she'd be long gone just from the stress of having to deal with weirdness of all sorts. Somehow she got things settled in her mind from the start. She's virtually unshockable by her subjects; she's seen it all (or most of it).

    --Swift Loris

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  5. Another Philip Treacy hat.....Don't laugh, that's the same guy who designed the world's most famous hat, which recently sold for £81,101. Obviously he's got a touch.

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  6. I thought at first it was her hair, which would be totally cool. But as a hat it's not either. Here's another view: http://www.graziadaily.co.uk/fashion/archive/2011/06/02/where-did-you-get-that-hat-katharine-hamnett.htm

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  7. It's not really all that different from the sort of thing she's seen all her life on the heads of her various Governors General...
    http://tinyurl.com/governorhat

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  8. @Skipweasel--very funny!

    If I may ask, how did you manage to get "governorhat" on the end of the TinyURL rather than random characters?

    --Swift Loris

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  9. @Swift Loris
    Oh, that's simple - on the create-a-tinyurl page there's a slot into which you can enter a custom alias. You only get one go (though of course you can resubmit, it's just a bit inelegant) so it's probably a good idea to pick something unlikely to have been used before. tinyurl/hat would probably have been taken, for example.

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  10. @Skipweasel--many thanks. I never noticed the "alias" box! Neat.--

    Swift Loris

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  11. It's Katherine with a 'K', not Catherine with a 'C'. I'm a prick, what can I say.

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  12. Actually, now that I read the quote in my own post, it's KathArine. Both errors fixed. Tx for the heads-up.

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