Walking down the street in matching outfits, Carole and Pippa looked as if they were filming an episode of the BBC series Hotter Than My Daughter — a reality show where daughters despair of their mutton-dressed-as-lamb mothers and their too sexy, too revealing, too young choice of clothes. Such behaviour from Carole Middleton will only give ammunition to those cynics who think she is a shameless social climber.
Dressing too young: Carole, 56, wears a dress more revealing that her daughter Kate's choice. It ticked all three fashion faux pas boxes: too young, too tight, too bright. And Carole Middleton is not alone. The trend for good-looking mothers to compete with their daughters in the glamour stakes seems to be creeping into all sections of society. Like mother, like daughter: Carole dresses in a nearly identical outfit to Kate's for a day at the polo. Fergie is a classic example, turning her daughters Eugenie and Beatrice into mini-me clones, the poor lasses.
At least Carole does have some fashion flair and a sensational figure. I was 26 when I got married and my mother was She was magnificently matronly in the sweetest and truest meaning of the word — dignified, mature and, most importantly, motherly.
Children, especially daughters, need their mums to be role models, not fashion models. Inappropriate choice: When Carole and Michael turned out for the world's press following Prince William and Kate's engagement, she wore a pair of ridiculously tight skinny jeans and high-heeled boots topped off with a cropped zipper jacket that looked as though it had come straight out of the window of Topshop.
I must confess that I have a personal shopper friend to thank for saving me from a mutton misadventure not so long ago. We were trying on clothes in an upmarket department store and I had my heart set on a beautiful, black leather biker jacket. It fitted like a dream, but she pulled a disapproving face when I tried it on. Too tight, too expensive, too daring? But true. And I would offer the same advice to Carole.
It is partly insecurity, a denial of the passing of the years, that makes women dress inappropriately. Success came late to Carole, from cabin crew to millionaire businesswoman on the back of her Party Pieces company. But she seems never to have really grown up.
The international intrigue of the Royal Family doesn't simply include the likes of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince William and Kate Middleton, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, anyone and quite frankly, everyone who has ever moved in the same circles will undoubtedly receive their moment in the spotlight - whether they want it or not!
From former lovers and friends to distant acquaintances and siblings, every detail of the Royal Family's past and present produces news headlines daily.
And, one name that continually pops up is, Pippa Middleton. But this Middleton sister is beautiful and lovely in her own right. The younger sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, the stylish and royal-adjacent Pippa, has experienced a certain level of celebrity since becoming the sister-in-law to the future King.
Michael was from a wealthy aristocratic family that had entertained British royals in decades past. He became a flight dispatcher, which is where he met flight attendant and future wife Carole Goldsmith. She has an older brother named Michael and, of course, an older sister named Kate.
Her slinky white outfit designed by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen almost stole the show and was widely praised. Of course, in the context of a sibling who is royalty, we're automatically interested in the one who is not constrained by that duty and can play out a freer and naughtier version of the other's life.
Princess Margaret was that counter-narrative to the Queen. Similarly, Prince Harry's appeal is largely because he can do and has done what Prince William will not. There's a perfect symmetry to [these figures]," notes Alison Eastwood, editor of Hello!
The fleeting suggestion that Prince Harry was romantically interested in Pippa, a. Her Royal Hotness, at the time of the royal wedding was evidence of the fascination with the second string, she adds. In the voracious cultural imagination, they could have served as the perfect genetically similar foil couple to the duty-bound Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. But the attention and commentary Pippa attracts is notably different in quantity and tone.
Princess Diana's sisters never got such scrutiny, for example. And that may be because of age-old class-conscious biases about people who seem to be trying too hard to rise above their station or capitalizing on their connection to the royal family. When the Middleton sisters were at their posh boarding schools and universities and then on the London social scene, they were dubbed the "Wisteria sisters," meaning "highly decorative, terribly fragrant and with a ferocious ability to climb.
They had to get over that. He is the future King, and his word rules. The uncomfortable irony for Pippa, of course, is that she may go to all the best parties and consort with the titled, but she is not an aristocrat with a trust fund. Which is also why her love life is of such interest. Known for dating highly eligible, rich men — including Jonathan "JJ" Jardine Paterson, an heir to a Hong Kong fortune; Scottish aristocrat Billy More Nisbett; diamond heir Simon Youngman; nightclub entrepreneur Charlie Gilkes; and stockbroker Nico Jackson, her current beau — Pippa, now 29, has an uncertain narrative compared to her sister, who has bagged her prince and ensured her future.
Adding to the Pippa Problem is that in her entrepreneurial zeal, she seems alarmingly unaware of the rich potential for ridicule. She pushed ahead with her book even though the palace "didn't want her to write it," according to Sykes.
When it was criticized, she wrote a defence of it for The Daily Telegraph, which made her seem both thin-skinned and strident. A proper public-relations response might have been to remain in dignified silence. She may be "speaking" through her writing under the delusion that if she controls the script, she will not embarrass anyone, including her sister or herself, but she is in a no-win situation.
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