Recently, a woman in the midst of a career change came to see me. This former banker, who took time off to get married and have children, was on the verge of beginning a new life in the high-end fragrance business. Her launch product is a limited edition perfume called “Tiara” that will sell for $1,200 and features particularly glitzy packaging: nestling inside a white resin box is a glass vial shaped like a cupcake, “crowned” by a special silvery top studded with sapphire blue Swarovski ovals. The look was, she said, inspired by the late Princess Diana’s engagement ring, as now worn by the Duchess of Cambridge.
“I was living in London a year ago,” she explained, “and you just couldn’t get away from that wedding.” Admittedly, there was some creative licence being employed to turn the ring into a tiara but I got the point.
Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of “that wedding” or one year to the day since Kate Middleton became a fully-fledged fashion icon, inspiring products such as the perfume above and causing those of us on this side of the pond to wake up at the ungodly hour of 5am to find out who made the dress. The ensuing 12 months have been so closely watched, Time magazine recently chose not only the Duchess, but Alexander McQueen’s creative director Sarah Burton, aka the maker of the dress, as two of the 100 most influential people in the world. As they said of Kate and her sister Pippa: “Other women aim to dress like them, to emulate their easy athleticism and their more problematic slenderness.”