Sophie, Duchess Of Edinburgh Won't Live Down Her Inappropriate Outfit For A Royal Wedding
Over the past decades, the British royal family has shown how ruthless they can be about customs and fashion protocol. They don't expose their shoulders at official events, they continue to wear fascinators no matter how impractical they are, and in many cases, they have to stick to certain colors of nail polish. One would imagine that this strictness means that royals like Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, would know better than to make certain fashion faux pas, but one extremely inappropriate outfit she's worn shows that this is not the case.
In 2002, Sophie attended the wedding of a Norwegian Royal, Princess Märtha Louise, in a dress that broke one of the most important rules of what not to wear to a wedding: Don't attempt to upstage the bride. The dress was floor-length and white with four triangular navy panels. And though the entire dress wasn't white, most of the fabric was. Plus, with the added tiara and white scarf, the dress could have easily passed for a minimalist wedding gown, which was clearly inappropriate for a wedding guest.
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Wearing white is bad enough when it's done by regular folk who don't have royal fashion budgets, but it's especially bad in Sophie's case. Not only did it look like an intentional attempt to stand out at someone else's wedding, but it also showed a lack of consideration. Her outfit choice was attention-seeking and certainly contributed to her bad fashion reputation over the years.
Sophie often lands on worst-dressed lists at royal events
After marrying Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1999, Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, naturally became a fixture at royal events. This lengthy history as a royal might have improved her in many ways, but her fashion taste remained questionable. In the earlier days, a large number of her outfits were style crimes, inappropriate 'fits, or both. One example we won't be forgetting any time soon was the multi-colored suit she wore to the 2001 Royal Ascot.
From a royal standpoint, the suit was an odd pick. It was a mesh of bright colors that came across as informal, especially since the skirt sat above the knee. Worse still, the outfit was just as bad from a stylistic point of view. Bright colors can work together, but only if the finished result doesn't seem like a haphazard choice, and this certainly did. All in all, it didn't seem like something to wear to a semi-formal meeting, much less an important royal event.
As the years have gone by, the major change to Sophie's wardrobe is that her outfits are less inappropriate and more boring. In 2024, for example, she was rated as one of the worst-dressed royals at Trooping the Colour, thanks to an unbelievably dull yellow dress. You would imagine that this would spur a fashion change, but it didn't. She showed up with an even duller dress the next year and was perhaps the most unfashionable royal at Trooping the Colour 2025. Then she doubled down with yet another uninspired dress at the 2025 Royal Ascot. We're not sure if Sophie works with a stylist, but whoever is in charge of what she wears needs a serious fashion refresher course.