In the breathlessly anticipated final six episodes of The Crown’s concluding season, there are plenty of jaw-dropping moments inspired by true events, but one of the most staggering involves a young Kate Middleton’s participation in a certain charity fashion show – one which, both in the Netflix series and reportedly in real life, changed the trajectory of her relationship with her future husband, Prince William. But, what actually happened at the event, and how does it compare to what we see on screen? Below, we separate the fact from the fiction.
Per The Crown’s retelling, the now Prince and Princess of Wales were interested in and attracted to each other from the outset, though their relationships with other people prevented them from being together. In episode nine, titled “Hope Street”, however, Ed McVey’s then single Prince William is told that Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy), whom he’s been pining after, is now also single again – and not only that, but she’s also planning to model in a university fashion show whose tone is “risqué”. We then see Bellamy’s Kate telling her mother excitedly that she’s heard that William will be attending to watch her strut down the runway.
It seems that the reality, though, was rather different. According to accounts from the time, when that student charity fashion show, called “The Art of Seduction”, took place at the St Andrews Bay Hotel on 26 March 2002, both Kate and William were still dating other people and only saw each other as friends. Since meeting at university six months earlier, they’d reportedly gotten on well, and it’s believed that William relied on Kate’s advice when he was going through a difficult period personally, and debating whether or not to drop out of university.
This sequence plays out slightly differently on The Crown, where Kate sends William a text that reads, “Please don’t leave uni”, but it’s clear that the pair want to be more than just friends. In real life, by that spring, William had apparently already identified Kate as a potential flatmate for his second year house share. On the show, however, that conversation arises much later, once the couple are already dating.
In The Crown, we see Kate arriving at the show, spotting William in the audience, and then searching the rails for an outfit. Her pick? A showstopping sheer strapless dress with a blue trim. She then steps out onto the catwalk in it, basking in the spotlight and leaving William speechless.
In reality, the scene played out similarly, if not exactly, as depicted. Firstly, there’s the matter of the dress: the look we see on the show closely resembles Kate’s real-life ensemble, albeit with subtle differences when it comes to the materials and the pattern of the blue trim at the top. “We always have legal issues with things like that,” the show’s costume designer, Amy Roberts, recently explained to Vogue. “We didn’t get permission to copy it from the designer, which is fair enough, so we had to recreate it, and that’s a fine balance – we want people to know that’s that dress, but we don’t want to offend the designer. With that dress, the most important elements are the transparency and the strapless silhouette. We used different fabrics from the original and a different ribbon thread, but it was close enough for everyone to recognise it.”
That designer was a fellow St Andrews student, Charlotte Todd, who spent just £30 on making the dress. For years afterwards, the look reportedly languished at the back of a wardrobe at Todd’s mother’s house, but once William and Kate announced their engagement in 2010, Todd realised that it had become a piece of fashion history. It would later go on to be sold at auction for an eye-watering £78,000.
And as for the question of whether or not Kate picked out the look for herself, as she does in the episode? It’s not clear if that was indeed the case, but Todd has said that it certainly wasn’t her decision to have Kate wear it. “I didn’t know who Kate Middleton was and I didn’t put her in it,” she told People. “It was just pure chance. I made it as a skirt, but others pulled it up on Kate and she wore it as a dress.” Make of that what you will.
What seems to be fairly accurate, however, is William’s reaction. By all accounts, he was blown away. Friends of the prince at the time recall that the event made him see Kate in a different light, and there’s a general consensus that it was a major turning point in their relationship and at least partly responsible for taking them from friends to something more. Two things that weren’t depicted in the show, though? William was believed to have paid £200 for a front row ticket, and there’s a long-standing rumour that he turned to one of his friends during the show and said the immortal words, “Wow, Kate’s hot.”
Shortly after The Crown’s runway scene, we see William and Kate at an after-party, where he tells her that she looked incredible. She then asks him if he’s really interested in her, he promises that he’s “always been interested, bordering on obsessed”, and they share a kiss which is quickly interrupted by William’s protection officer, who informs him that his great grandmother has passed away.
This is perhaps where the show deviates most dramatically from what really happened. Accounts of what played out at this particular after-party vary, though it’s generally agreed that William and Kate had a few drinks, after which he made his move. Some recall him simply giving her a kiss on the hand, while others say he leaned in for a proper kiss. However, as they were then seeing other people, Kate apparently rebuffed him. Within a few weeks, though, those relationships came to an end and the pair began dating some months later. Oh, and one thing we can say with absolute certainty? Their kiss was not cut short by news of the Queen Mother’s death – she passed away four days later, on 30 March 2002.
This article first appeared on vogue.co.uk
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