Who gets the coveted job of designing the royal wedding dress? Photo / Getty Images.
Who gets the coveted job of designing the royal wedding dress? Photo / Getty Images.
Betting had closed on who would design Meghan Markle's wedding dress after a flood of money came for British designer Alexander McQueen.
However, the Daily Mail says a royal insider has claimed that the actress has chosen Australian-born designers Tamara Ralph and Michael Russo of Ralph & Russo for thecoveted gig.
Has Meghan chosen a Ralph & Russo-designed wedding dress? Photo / Getty Images
Ralph & Russo designs at Paris Fashion Week. Photo / Getty Images
"We will be politely declining to comment on this topic," a Ralph & Russo spokesman said.
Markle did wear a Ralph & Russo dress for her official engagement photo and is clearly a fan of their creations.
The fashion house was formed after Tamara Ralph graduated from the Whitehouse Institute of Design in Melbourne and travelled to London in the hopes of starting her own line.
There she met banker Michael Russo in 2003 and they launched Ralph & Russo in 2006 with just an ironing board and a sewing machine.
The brand is highly exclusive with the designers deciding to sell only one version of each garment per country.
In 2014, Ralph & Russo was the first British brand to show at Paris Couture Week.
Dresses start at AU$53,000 ($57,000) and Markle's engagement dress cost a whopping AU$99,000 ($106,000).
The fashion house is based in a seven-storey Mayfair salon overlooking the gardens of Buckingham Palace, so nice and close for Markle.
Stewart Parvin, Roland Mouret, Erdem and Alexander McQueen were among the favourites to design Markle's dress.
In February, the betting for Markle's wedding gown was suspended after the house of McQueen suddenly became the favourite. The odds for the brand designing the royal bridal gown changed from 16/1 to 8/1 overnight.
"We previously had Ralph and Russo as the 2/1 favourites and there's also been a lot of talk of Erdem as a big frontrunner," Betfair spokesperson Katie Baylis told Daily Express.
"However, we've now suspended this market after seeing some interesting betting on Alexander McQueen this morning who went from 16/1 to 8/1 in a very short space of time."
