Meghan Markle dealt fashion blow over Princess Kate designer

Princess Kate’s favorite designer, Sarah Burton, has been handed the creative keys to Givenchy, the fashion house so loved by Meghan Markle that she tasked it with making her wedding dress in 2018. This could come as a potential blow to the style-minded duchess, according to a new episode of Newsweek‘s The Royal Report podcast.

Burton was announced as the new creative director of the French fashion house in a statement from the brand on September 9.

“Givenchy announces the appointment of Sarah Burton as Creative Director, with immediate effect,” the statement read. “Sarah will be responsible for the creative direction of all of the Maison’s Women’s and Men’s collections. Her first collection will be presented in March 2025.”

Burton left her former role at the house of Alexander McQueen in 2023, where she had worked for over two decades and had made some of Kate’s most famous dresses, including those worn for her wedding in 2011 and the coronation of King Charles III in 2023.

Givenchy, the brand adored by Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy, was founded in 1952 and has been headed by a succession of British creative directors since the retirement of its founder, Hubert de Givenchy, in 1995.

In 2018, Meghan Markle selected one of these, Clare Waight Keller, who had joined the house a year earlier, to design the most important dress of her public life: her royal wedding dress.

From the wedding day, Givenchy became synonymous with the new Duchess of Sussex. The newest British royal wore Waight Keller designs for the house to high-profile events, including Royal Ascot and the British Fashion Awards, where she presented the designer with a special accolade in recognition of her work.

Now, though, with Waight Keller having left the house in 2020 and pursuing private collaborations with the likes of affordable casual wear brand Uniqlo and sister-in-law Kate’s favorite designer being installed in its Paris atelier, Newsweek‘s chief royal correspondent, Jack Royston, told Royal Report listeners that Meghan may be unlikely to return.

“If Meghan ever wanted to do a big thing about returning to her wedding dress designer, then she can’t realistically go back to Clare Waight Keller while she’s at Uniqlo. But until now, it would have been an option to go to Givenchy and go back to the fashion house rather than back to the designer,” Royston said.

“Not anymore, though, really, because Sarah Burton is not just any favorite fashion designer of Kate’s, but the very designer who played a bit part in the famous argument between Kate and Meghan over bridesmaid dresses.”

“Harry’s book Spare says that Kate told Meghan all the bridesmaid dresses in the days before the Sussex wedding had to be remade, they couldn’t simply be altered, they were too baggy and that, she said, specifically that her wedding dress designer agreed. This is according to Harry, and that designer is Sarah Burton,” Royston said.

Neither Kate nor Burton responded to Harry’s claim in his memoir when it was published in 2023.

Royston suggested that the incident could prove uncomfortable if Meghan wants to buy from Givenchy in the future.

“Given the big hoo-hah that that all caused, it’s very difficult to believe that Meghan is going to want to then go to Sarah Burton and ask for a dress,” he said.

“Meghan wore a lot of Givenchy during her time at the palace, a little less so in her post-royal era but I do think this is a blow to Meghan, just because it appears to shut the door on Givenchy as an option despite the very important role that the fashion House has obviously played in her life.

“And even if she’s not like about to go back to them right now, I think it will be so disappointing that she can’t go back to them in the future for as long as Sarah Burton’s there.”

Newsweek approached representatives of Meghan Markle via email for comment.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek‘s royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.

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