His Majesty, the Times has reported, is set to bestow upon Kate the right to issue her own royal warrants.
It’s a perk that no Princess of Wales has enjoyed since 1910 and which was long denied to Diana, Princess of Wales along with things like happiness, marital fidelity or being allowed to play Wham at top volume during Trooping the Colour.
What’s that? What’s a warrant? Why, I’m so glad you asked.
Dating back to the 16th century, royal warrants recognise British companies which supply the royal family with various products, who in turn can proudly superglue big royal arms to their front doors and websites and tout their royal association as loudly as they fancy.
For example, A Hester Limited can proudly trumpet its credentials as Buckingham Palace’s official emptier of septic tanks, cesspools, tanks and pits while, should you want to buy your game bird-rearing equipment and grouse grit from the same place Charles gets his, then head to Scotland’s Game and Country Limited. Why would you buy your grit from anywhere else?
Conversely, losing a warrant makes for terrible PR. In 2018, the late Queen’s official supplier of bras – really – Rigby & Peller lost its after an executive was a bit too loose-lipped about things.
But when it comes to Kate joining the royal warrant club, there are possibly billions of dollars involved. (The only members are Charles, Queen Camilla and William).
Ever since November 16, 2010, when a blushing, pleased-with-themselves William and Kate turned up at St James’ Palace to announce their engagement, there has been a thriving, bustling Kate fashion industrial complex with any number of websites and social media accounts solely devoted to chronicling her style. (And finding affordable duplicates for those of us cruelly denied six-figure clothing budgets.)
When the princess is given the power to grant her chosen brands, products and companies with her literal seal of approval, the dollar value associated with it could well extend into the nine figures.
In the 12 months after the Waleses’ 2011 wedding alone, Kate increased public spending by nearly $2 billion, which is more than the GDP of the Solomon Islands.
Catherine Zoraida, a British jewellery designer, recently explained the seismic impact the princess can have on a company’s fortunes, telling the Times her website crashed after the royal trotted out one of her pairs of earrings. Since then, Zoraida says that every time the princess wears one of her designs, she gets “something like a 500% lift in sales”.
While blogs such as “What Kate Wore” might already lovingly chronicle where Kate gets her stable of colour-co-ordinated power pumps, just imagine the sales that will be driven when the world learns where she genuinely buys her more everyday items, anything and everything from her lip gloss to her Le Creuset.
In an interesting bit of accidental mirroring, Kate is not the only one of the King’s daughters-in-law who is getting into actively embracing the awesome brand power of royal association.
Take the bag company Strathberry.
In 2017, for her first official engagement as a royal fiancee, the woman formerly known as Meghan Markle toted one of their pieces. It sold out within 11 minutes. As the obviously now Duchess of Sussex told the New York Times last year, that moment “changed everything in terms of how I then looked at putting an outfit together”.
“That’s one of the most powerful things that I’m able to do, and that’s simply wearing, like, an earring,” as Meghan herself told the Times.
Post Megxit, that style superpower has not waned in the least.
In May 2023, blurry pap shots of Meghan arriving at a dinner with Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz showed her carrying a bag from women-run brand Cesta Collective.
Said Cesta co-founder Erin Ryder, speaking to the Times, of the immediate impact: “We had more sales in one day than we’ve ever had”.
While the Duchess of Sussex will be allowed to issue a royal warrant the day that hell freezes over, she clearly understands her commercial influence.
Last year, the duchess invested in Cesta and now reportedly has between five and 10 brands in her portfolio, including Clevr Brands vegan lattes and the Highbrow Hippie hair care range.
As the former Suits star explained last year, “investing in them has helped me line up for this chapter where I’m investing in myself”, which does not at all sound like a carefully pre-prepared line in the least.
No date has been set for when the Princess of Wales might start granting her warrants. Nor, it should be noted, is this the first time it has been reported that the princess might be about to start officially anointing her go-to brands, so it could be a while yet.
For now, we will have to remain patient and ignorant about where on Kings Rd it is that Kate goes to stock up on her various face serums, and hopefully one glorious day soon, an entire nation’s credit cards will be ready to finally lie back and think of Britain.
