bitchy | Nicholl: Duchess Kate is successful at NOT ’emulating Princess Diana’?

The Duchess of Cambridge is known for many things: buttons, laziness, wiglets, wedges of doom. One of the things she’s best known for is her creepy copykeening. All of that money and embiggening, and she can’t buy herself a unique style, so she copies and single-white-females. Kate’s copykeen targets are her mother, her late mother-in-law, the Queen and the Duchess of Sussex. Kate’s copykeening of Meghan has gotten profoundly disturbing in recent years, so much so that it’s easy to forget how creepy Kate has been about copying Diana for more than a decade. Mind you, all of this is simply surface-level copying. It would never occur to Kate to copy Diana’s work ethic, passion, vivacity or emotional intelligence. No, Kate just pores over old photos of Diana and tries to imitate her fashion down to the shoulder pads and pussybows. But to hear Katie Nicholl tell it, Kate has always made a conscious effort to NOT follow in Diana’s footsteps.

According to royal expert Katie Nicholl, the Duchess of Cambridge didn’t try to become the new Diana—the naturally occurring comparisons were enough for her.

“I think one of the great strengths of Kate, and one of her real successes, is that she hasn’t followed in Diana’s footsteps,” Nicholl told 9Honey. “I don’t think she seeks to emulate Diana. I think she was so aware of the comparison right from the outset, but despite the weight of that engagement ring on her finger, and the significance that that holds and the comparisons it inevitably draws, she is actually a very different woman. Her success has been in carving her own identity in the Royal Family as the Duchess of Cambridge and making that role herself.”

“I think a respectful nod, a respectful tribute. After the birth of George when she wore that blue and white dress, after Louis’s birth she was in the red, that was very Diana, Diana had worn the same sort of red dress,” Nicholl continued. “We see it when she wears her jewellery and some of the outfits … really, it’s a respectful nod and an acknowledgement of the continuation of history.”

Also, as has been remarked many a time, the duchess tries to raise her kids the way her husband’s mom did.

“We see it in how she’s sort of trying to raise the children in an ordinary way, which is what Diana very much wanted for Harry and William,” Nicholl added. “But I think for the most part, Kate really strives and works very hard to be her own royal, to be her own person, to be a totally unique Duchess of Cambridge, and I think she succeeded in that.”

[From Marie Claire]

In some sense, Nicholl is sort of right – Kate made a conscious choice to play the game in a way Diana refused to. Kate suffers indignities in silence, she doesn’t fuss about her husband’s wandering scepter, she’s not out to change the monarchy or modernize anything whatsoever. That’s actually Kate’s great failing -she “played the game,” got the ring and the cheating husband, plus three kids and four houses, and after all that, Kate is being shuffled off to a little separation cottage in Windsor and there’s nothing she can do about it. She’s left no mark, done no damage nor made any changes.

Of course, in other ways, it’s clear that Kate is completely obsessed with Diana and she would love to “emulate” Diana in superficial ways. Kate is not simply doing vague homages to Diana for important occasions. She is literally studying a detailed Diana lookbook to copy what Diana wore to rugby matches, movie premieres and christenings.

PS… When I was looking up our coverage of Kate’s copykeening, I came across this piece from a few months ago which claimed that Kate was successfully attempting a glamorous new style rebrand. LOL.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Instar.