Daniela Elser: Kate Middleton's secret makeover that nobody noticed

While many people may not see Kate's new makeover as radical, this stealthy move from the Duchess is quite groundbreaking. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

Here is today's assignment, class: Everyone look at the picture below of Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge and tell me what immediately jumps out at you. What is the big change you can spot, something that signals a real shift in her royal career? Hands up please.

Now, who said it was her outfit? No, not the $83 double-breasted Zara blazer she trotted out and which she previously wore to last year's European Football Championship finals (and which makes her look a tad too much like a pepped up real estate agent ready to sell your house).

The Duchess of Cambridge arrives for a visit of the Copenhagen Infant Mental Health Project. Photo / Getty Images

It's her pants. Her wide-legged, $1328 Roland Mouret pants. (And not because she spent a huge sum of money on a piece she could have probably gotten from Uniqlo for a tenth of the price.)

Kate was in Denmark this week for a two-day visit, her first international engagement since the pandemic began. She was in the Scandinavian country on a fact-finding mission as the Danes are a world-leader in early childhood development.

Sure, the visit was notable because when she arrived at the Lego Foundation she very cheerfully and suspiciously readily agreed to make her entrance via the huge slide, thus making history as becoming the first member of the royal family to ever have a go on a slippery dip in full view of the press corps. (Aides would have done a recce before Kate even got around to picking which red top to trawl out – the woman is prosaic and horribly literal when it comes to colour choice- so just how spontaneous the slide moment was is questionable.)

Still, we are here to talk about her pants.

Ever since Kate got Diana, Princess of Wales' honking great sapphire engagement ring on her finger in late 2010, her signature look has been feminine frocks galore. If ever there was any doubt the former part-time accessories buyer had cracking knees then she had put them on display hundreds of times since becoming a bona fide member of the royal family.

Over the last decade very little has changed on that front. Through 10 years of learning and mastering the royal ropes, through 25 international trips, three pregnancies and two house moves, she has relied pretty much exclusively on dresses that have ranged from a $29 Zara job to $10,000-plus couture creations.

It has been a simple but successful equation: Lady-like number plus heels plus clutch bag plus big smile equals permanent public (and Queenly) approval.

This sartorial formula has worked wonders, suitably charming traditionalists, conservative opinion columnists and the British hosiery industry.

Except that stealthily (and might I say, impressively) Kate has been doing away with that model, trading in her village cricket captain's wife aesthetic for a particular sort of professional chic, albeit with overtones of someone who has spent too long googling the infuriating neologism 'girlboss'.

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge visits the Stenurten Forest Kindergarten on February 23, 2022. Photo / Getty Images

Of the last 15 daytime engagements she has undertaken, she has eschewed a skirt or dress in favour of a pair of businesslike slacks on 11 occasions – or 73 per cent of the time – which is totally unprecedented. (And on one of the days she did wear a dress, it was when she joined her father-in-law Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall which necessitated a more conservative approach.)

While occasionally in the past she would pepper skinny jeans or a fetching pair of culottes into her fashion mix, they were very much the exception to the rule. But now, Kate has very clearly flipped the script.

This, I would argue, isn't down to Kate having finally gotten around to reading some Andrea Dworkin but is about signalling a much more interesting shift and the advent of the much more ambitious new chapter in her royal good works.

The Duchess of Cambridge in 2015. Photo / Getty Images

Kate is getting down to business and her wardrobe clearly is too.

In 2020, she launched her Five Big Questions survey, a landmark project focused on the parental attitudes to the five years of childhood and which ultimately attracted over 500,000 responses.

Come June last year she and she ranked things up, debuting her very own outfit, The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, choosing the suitably academic London School of Economics for the occasion.

This week's trip to Denmark is the first time that she has taken this work to the world stage but it will definitely not be the last.

Kate has made no secret of the fact that this is her legacy work, the key area she intends to focus on not just for the time being but for decades to come.

Clearly she wants her clothing choices to tally with and reflect this approach.

Since late 2020, Kate has been steadily introducing a marked number of pants suits into her working wardrobe, not a demure hemline or floral pattern in sight. There was the dusky pink Marks & Spencer she donned in March of that year to visit an NHS call centre, a Smythe navy blue blazer and co-ordinating pants for a video for the Pride of Britain awards in October, and the truly showstopping purple Emilia Wickstead jewel-tone suit for trip to Northern Ireland.

It is also worth considering if this pants switch-up is not just a symbolic gesture but that there is something a tad more cunning at play. If Kate's new work uniform is henceforth going to be some sort of black pants and jacket situation or a cheerful suit, then it would suck a significant amount of oxygen out of focus on her style when she undertakes official outings. If her look became wholly predictable then it would mean that the media would be left to nearly exclusively cover whatever work she was up to.

Kate might only have gotten a second class degree in art history but she seems to innately understand the power of reclaiming and changing her own narrative.

The irony here is that as William pursues a similar tack, ramping up his climate change campaigning, most notably by his $94 million Earthshot Prize and starts to make his professional mark, he seems to have felt increasingly emboldened to take fashion risks, for example the green velvet blazer and skivvy he donned for the Earthshot awards or the black velvet dinner jacket he chose for last year's glittering Bond premiere.

Double standards, huh? Even a future king and Queen aren't immune.

So who wears the pants in the Cambridge household these days? Whoever the hell wants. Andrea Dworkin would approve.

• Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.