Meghan Markle’s Wedding Dress Designer Reacts to Her ‘Minimalist’ Wardrobe Post-Royal Life

NEED TO KNOW

• Meghan Markle’s wedding dress designer, Clare Waight Keller, shared her thoughts on the Duchess of Sussex’s wardrobe evolution

• “The thing about Meghan is she knows what she likes,” said Uniqlo’s creative director

• Meghan has previously spoken about her decision to wear muted color as a working member of the royal family

Meghan Markle’s signature style is getting praise from someone who knows her fashion sense very well: her royal wedding dress designer.

Clare Waight Keller, who was behind the Duchess of Sussex’s off-the-shoulder bridal gown for her walk down the aisle to marry Prince Harry in 2018, spoke about Meghan’s “evolved” outfit choices in a new interview with The Telegraph.

“The thing about Meghan is she knows what she likes,” said the designer, who now works as Uniqlo’s creative director. “She has very much evolved her look to what you see now — a minimalist, chic, timeless and quite monochromatic wardrobe. She knows what looks good.”

While women of the British royal family are known to embrace color in their closets, with the late Queen Elizabeth famously choosing bold outfit colors in an effort to stand out in a crowd, Meghan was known for sticking to more muted colors as a working member of the family. The Duchess of Sussex, 44, explained her reasoning in the Netflix series Harry & Meghan.

“Most of the time that I was in the U.K., I rarely wore color. There was thought in that,” she said. “To my understanding, you could never wear the same color as Her Majesty [Queen Elizabeth] if there’s a group event, but then you also shouldn’t be wearing the same color as one of the other more senior members of the family,” she added, alluding to Kate Middleton and Queen Camilla.

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“So I was like, ‘Well, what’s a color that they’ll probably never wear?’ Camel, beige, white,” she continued. “So I wore a lot of muted tones, but it was also so I could just blend in. I’m not trying to stand out here. There was no version of me joining this family and me not doing everything I could to fit in. I don’t want to embarrass the family.”

That all changed in 2020. After Meghan and Prince Harry announced that they were stepping back from their roles as working members of the royal family, they made some final engagements in the U.K. — and Meghan said, “I thought: ‘Well, let’s just look like a rainbow.’ ” Meghan’s style choices that week included a light blue Victoria Beckham dress, a dramatic red caped dress by Safiyaa and a green Emilia Wickstead dress with a matching fascinator by William Chambers.

Despite her rainbow week, the Duchess of Sussex has largely stuck to whites, blacks, blues and browns in recent years since relocating to California with Harry and their two children — including for her debut at Paris Fashion Week in October. Meghan attended a Balenciaga show wearing a white oversized cape over a button-down shirt and wide-leg trousers of the same color.

Meghan previously spoke to the New York Times about how she knows the attention on her ensembles can impact a brand.

“Times where I know there is a global spotlight and attention will be given to each detail of what I may or may not be wearing, then I support designers that I have really great friendships with, and smaller, up-and-coming brands that haven’t gotten the attention that they should be getting,” she said.

She added, “That’s one of the most powerful things that I’m able to do, and that’s simply wearing, like, an earring.”

And in a season one episode of her Netflix series With Love, Meghan, she explained her “lewk” to guest Mindy Kaling, noting that she likes a balance of “high-low” in her ensembles. That day, for example, she was wearing pants from Zara, a shirt by Italian luxury brand Loro Piana and a sweater from California designer Jenni Kayne.

Waight Keller spent time with Meghan in California last summer, according to The Telegraph, and previously shared that she got to be friends with the Duchess of Sussex during their collaboration on the royal wedding gown.

When Meghan made a surprise appearance at the British Fashion Awards in 2018 to present Waight Keller with the British Women’s Wear Designer of the Year award, the designer said, “I got to know Meghan on such a personal level. To have someone like that trust you in an incredible moment in their life is something that is just the most unbelievable honor. I can’t thank you enough because it was the most beautiful moment.”

Read the original article on People