Meghan Markle Paired Princess Diana’s Butterfly Earrings With Timeless, Practical Work Flats
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are once again on a demi-royal tour in Colombia, meaning the Murdoch empire is brainstorming headlines with VERY inflammatory ADJECTIVES in them, and the fashion world is busy parsing everything that’s made it into the Duchess of Sussex’s Away case for subtext.
Thus far wardrobe-wise, she’s delivered Latte-Adjacent Dressing (Colombia produces approximately 12 million bags of grade-A Arabica every year, after all); a smattering of Princess Diana references (including a pair of diamond-and-onyx butterfly earrings worn by Lady Di in the ’80s); and both a Johanna Ortiz dress and a Juan de Dios skirt.
The Duchess’s butterfly earrings once belonged to Diana, Princess of Wales.
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It may have been half a decade since the Sussexes travelled on behalf of the Crown, but the Duchess is still a graduate of the Windsor School of Diplomatic Styling, Class of ’18, and Ortiz and De Dios are among Latin America’s most esteemed designers.
A boldly patterned moment while wearing Johanna Ortiz.
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In a Juan de Dios skirt for a visit with the Invictus Games’s Colombian team.
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For anyone looking to make an investment purchase off the back of all of this, however, allow me to direct your attention to Meghan’s footwear during a trip to Colegio La Giralda in Sante Fe on August 18: namely, a pair of two-tone Chanel slingbacks, a shoe that, when spotted by fashion editors, is met with the sort of “Ooohs!” reserved elsewhere for, say, newborn babies or Internet Boyfriends.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Colegio La Giralda on August 16, 2024 in Bogota, Colombia.
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As much a part of the Chanel DNA as the 2.55 or the tweed jacket, it’s Coco who introduced the style in 1957, reclaiming the slingback from risqué affiliations. (In midcentury America, the silhouette had become a favorite of pin-ups of the Bettys Grable and Page variety, an association that Hollywood had beamed across the Atlantic.) Mademoiselle partnered with bottier Raymond Massaro to rework the shoe, lowering and flattening its stiletto to a five-centimeter heel, squaring its toe slightly, and choosing a beige body (to lengthen the leg) and a black cap (to hide any scuffs).
It’s Karl Lagerfeld, however, who introduced the ballerina style worn by the Duchess both this week and at the Invictus Games last September. This particular version of the show debuted in 1984 via a campaign fronted by Inès de la Fressange and shot by Helmut Newton. Naturally, it’s proved a bestseller in the 40 years since thanks to its perfect blend of practicality and polish—which, in the end, has always been Meghan Markle’s sartorial MO.
This article was originally published by British Vogue.
