9 times we couldn’t stop staring at Kate Middleton’s coats | Vogue India

The Duchess of Cambridge’s name might be synonymous with the coat dress—the hybrid fashion item that brings a degree of polish to the royal’s public-facing looks on even blustery days—but Kate has also amassed a collection of classic, immaculately cut coats that is worth a closer look.

Thanks to longstanding relationships with Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen and Said Cyrus, the man behind Catherine Walker & Co, Kate’s edit of custom outerwear ranges from crisp military styles to mannish double-breasted overcoats and caped fancies in a smorgasbord of wearable hues. Coats have become her secret weapon (along with that glossy blow-dry), painting a picture of a woman who remains pulled together regardless of the weather, or the particular duty she is navigating.

When tasked with visiting Sweden’s National Association for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Health in 2018, Kate wore a ’60s-style houndstooth Catherine Walker coat that signalled a level of self-assuredness in the face of sensitive conversations. For the 75th anniversary of the RAF Cadets in 2016, the Duchess pinned an Air Cadets Dacre brooch onto a sky-blue McQueen coat that honoured their work without looking overdone.

Middleton’s coats also reflect a pinch of the personality behind the public figurehead. To meet the Queen’s Scouts in 2013, the mother-of-three walked the lawns of Windsor Castle wearing a joyful Mulberry coat with flower-shaped buttons that nodded to her love of nature. At the 2018 Christmas Day church service at Sandringham, when all eyes were on her and her new sister-in-law, the Duchess of Sussex, she pinned an oak leaf brooch to her berry-coloured Catherine Walker button-up. The fauna represented the Middleton family’s coat of arms, and brought a slice of Kate’s personal history to another much-documented moment for the monarchy.

Here, nine of the Duchess of Cambridge’s most elegant coats that show her deftness of touch when it comes to commissioning expert tailoring.