Accidental style icon. That describes Princess Anne, the indefatigable royal who turns 75 Friday, who has no intention of retiring to private life despite her age. At an official event attended by other royals such as Kate Middleton and Duchess Sophie of Edinburgh, it’s unlikely that the second-born daughter of Queen Elizabeth will make headlines for her look, but hers may be the most interesting of all. There is no special process around what she wears other than the directions prescribed by protocol, there are no stylists to select her outfits, and she has not created any association with luxury brands. Yet Princess Anne is undoubtedly a style icon, even if by accident. The reason? She is one of the few royals who dress with personality. And you either have that or you don’t, there is no image consultant or brand who can make it for you.
“The Queen and I had a discussion the other day about the difference between fashion and style and I think maybe that’s relevant in the sense that she didn’t do fashion but she certainly does style, and style tends to last longer. You have an individual style and it’s a quality which has a long-term value,” she said in 2022. On the occasion of the Platinum Jubilee, the Australian magazine Women’s Day was granted not just an interview but the opportunity to eavesdrop on a conversation between mother and daughter.
The two women, for whatever reason, slipped into a conversation that led them to talk about clothes, illustrating their philosophy. Although Queen Elizabeth’s style and Princess Anne’s are very different, we can see a common matrix that prioritizes service over fashion trends.
Comfort comes first for the workaholic of the Royal Family. Every year the princess royal wins the title of the hardest-working royal, with hundreds and hundreds of events attended. In 2024 alone, the year a horseback riding accident forced her out of work for several weeks, she nevertheless reached 474. So she needs clothes that are both practical and appropriate for the context in which she will have to operate.
Between a helicopter or car transfer, a plane to catch and dozens of people to meet, Anne needs to be sure that her clothes will not betray her. So wearing tried-and-true, field-tested outfits provides her with the crystal ball: she knows how they will react to spills, how they will look in photographs, and whether the sleeves are appropriate for shaking the hands of those she meets.
Though rewears are a well-established practice among the royals who try to please detractors who do not want their tax dollars going into clothes, in Princess Anne we seem to detect a certain ill-concealed complacency in making headlines with looks several years old. With each outing, recent ones included, it is as if the royal confronts us with a riddle to be solved that sends royal fashion enthusiasts into jubilation.
There was her 2025 Commonwealth Day outfit, the same one she wore in 2023. There was the outfit she broke out on the second day of Royal Ascot 2025, originally spotted on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in 1987. At the Royal Ascot in 2015, Princess Anne dusted off a yellow coat that had debuted a full 35 years earlier at Trooping the Colour. There is a white coat with blue inserts on the shoulders that has cyclically reappeared since 1980.
In the portrait dedicated to her by the Daily Mail on the occasion of her birthday, some of her friends said that it is highly unlikely that Anne will buy a new dress for the wedding of her son Peter Phillips, who announced his engagement to Harriet Sperling on August 1.
“Princess Anne is a true style icon and was all about sustainable fashion before the rest of us really knew what that meant,” said Edward Enninful, former editor of British Vogue, in a Vanity Fair article from 2020. “She is timeless in her style, and she wears a tailored suit better than anyone else I can think of.”
