Queen Camilla ‘mustered her A game’ style-wise for the US state visit

Here are some assorted photos of Queen Camilla during this week’s US state visit. I’m including new photos of Camilla on Wednesday at the New York Public Library, where she had an event for the Queen’s Reading Room alongside Sarah Jessica Parker, Anna Wintour and Jenna Bush Hager. Camilla wore a navy silk crepe dress by Fiona Clare for that event and the walk-through of the 9/11 Memorial. She paired the dress with the Diamond Brittannia Brooch.

As for Camilla’s general style during this state visit, she really hasn’t done anything special. Sure, she yanked some significant brooches out of the Royal Collection, but her actual dresses and coats have been unremarkable, even frumpy. Well, at least one British fashionista disagrees. The Times’ Hilary Rose wrote a completely bonkers piece about Camilla’s state-visit style and how Camilla is not only offering the perfect amount of support to her husband, but Camilla is looking fit and flawless while doing so. Are we looking at the same photos?

It started the minute she got off the plane in a pale pink coat dress and a Cartier brooch. The logic seemed to be that if you’ve got to fly over the Atlantic in a tin can, you might as well throw Dior couture and Queen Elizabeth’s bling at the problem, and who can blame her? The brooch featured the American and British flags, picked out in rubies, diamonds and emeralds, and was gifted to Queen Elizabeth in 1957 by the mayor of New York. For a small piece of jewellery, it did a hell of a lot of diplomatic heavy lifting when Camilla was barely off the plane.

… Camilla would see her job in America as simply supporting the King. Looking at them together, though, it’s doubtful he could do it half as well without her. He’s still sprightly at 77, in spite of his continuing cancer treatment, and they’ve become a formidable double act. Her role when he gave his speech to Congress was simply to sit and listen but her pride and delight at the rousing reception he received was obvious. She is, after all, no mere wallflower, she’s the power behind the throne. Courtiers know that she is the only person who can truly “manage” the tricky and occasionally irascible Charles. She wasn’t born to her role but she couldn’t have risen to it without being wily and astute.

Camilla is the one who, according to the author Tom Bower, felt that Harry had been “brainwashed” by Meghan, and she is the steely gatekeeper who now effectively controls his access to his doting father. She left school with one O-level but is an avid reader, with a keen interest in military history thanks to her father, who served with distinction in the Second World War. Trump recently remarked that Europe “would be speaking German if it wasn’t for America”. It isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine Camilla coming up with the witty and elegant rebuke Charles delivered, with a smile, to a highly amused president at the state dinner: “If it wasn’t for us, you’d be speaking French.”

Her wardrobe in America effectively followed the formula she’s been honing since she married Charles but much, much better. For a trip this important, she’s evidently mustered her A game and mastered the technical art of getting a smooth line under a fitted dress so it looks polished from even the most unforgiving camera angle. That isn’t easy at any age, with any figure, let alone with curves at 78. She always wears a low heel, although she’d probably rather wear riding boots, albeit heels that are bunion-friendly and high-cut. No doubt she kicked them off at the end of a long day admiring a beehive, while yodelling for a stiff G&T. She’s had her eyebrows darkened because a bold brow adds structure to your face and looks better in photos. Her hair is longer, softer and less like a nailed-on helmet than it used to be. The net result is that the woman who used to be accused of being frumpy now looks really rather fabulous.

[For the state dinner], Melania has 20 years and a Florida tan over Camilla and made the best of it in sculptural pale pink Dior. In contrast, every inch of Camilla’s skin was covered by either hot pink fabric or million-dollar bling. The dress was intricately beaded and embroidered, and the necklace and matching earrings were diamonds and stonking great amethysts. They were, we were told, handed down from Queen Victoria to Queen Mary, the latter a woman who knew her way around a jewellery box and who, like Camilla, wasn’t afraid to wear it: the bigger, the better, and preferably all at once. Camilla never looks happier than when she’s wearing half the crown jewels. Anyone can buy a socking great circlet of emeralds, after all, and wear it to the White House and Lauren Sánchez Bezos did just that. Good for her. Equally, any influencer can upload a picture of their outfit then flog it on a ShopMy page.

Look, no one will ever forget the inimitable Queen Elizabeth, but it’s not a competition, it’s a hereditary monarchy. Everyone knows that Charles and Camilla aren’t as glamorous as the Prince and Princess of Wales. But what’s becoming clear in America is that they have a different type of glamour, one we might not notice so much back home: they’re the King and Queen. They’re No 1. Will this trip be remembered as the one where Camilla finally relaxed into her role and really, truly owned it? Certainly, she went to America and smashed it out of the park. And that’s not bad for a jet-lagged granny from Wiltshire.

[From The Times]

My goodness, how many women is Camilla competing with in that horsey head of hers? Melania Trump, the Duchess of Sussex, Diana, Queen Elizabeth II, Lauren Sanchez. If only Camilla and her defenders/enablers understood that no one actually wants to compete with Camilla, because there will never be a fair fight with a snake in the grass. Instead, the hyperventilating praise of Camilla comes across as something else entirely – neediness, desperation, “please clap.” I’m reminded again of how Camilla always felt like America was Diana’s “turf.”

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid, Avalon Red.