This British Heritage Brand Just Dropped a Collaboration With Kate Middleton

We’ve had enough of creative director musical chairs in the fashion industry, but now Kate Middleton is entering her designer days.

The Prince and Princess of Wales were dispatched to Stirling, Scotland yesterday afternoon, first to visit the National Curling Academy, meet Team GB ahead of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Milan, and end up enjoying a pint (while in Rome, among other places) at a Gothenburg pub in the former mining village of Faling. The highlight of the engagement, though – for readers of this magazine at least – will be the royal couple’s stop at Radical Weavers, a volunteer-run textile studio founded in 2019 to build social cohesion through traditional tartan weaving workshops and donate the finished products to food banks and homeless and refugee shelters.

Photo: Getty Images

The Welsh – who, as one volunteer joked, already had enough tartan – were invited to create a new pattern on a traditional loom, and William immediately reached for yarn in blue, teal, red, green and bright pink. “It’ll be interesting to see how they mix together,” he said, to which Catherine politely objected: “It’s too powerful.” Note: After all, the princess arrived in Scotland wearing a long, double-breasted Chris Kerr coat, Gianvito Rossi boots and a Le Kilt skirt, made from Johnstons of Elgin wool in a Caledonian-style navy and ice-blue plaid she co-designed. This is perhaps the first time she’s been publicly credited as a collaborator, and of course, she’s totally in sync with Kate Middleton’s style.