The entire Belgium Royal Family was on hand today to celebrate National Day and witness the swearing in of new King Philipe (see Queen Fabiola, Queen Paola and Queen Mathilde in this post). Philipe’s sister, Princess Astrid, wore a pink Chanel bouclé suit and matching textured fabric pillbox hat, trimmed with large flat bow at the back. Astrid’s fashion and hat choices in the past have tended toward the bold (and avant garde) and this look seemed unexpectedly demure.
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Astrid’s eldest daughters, Princess Maria Laura and Princess Luisa Maria, both wore pink fascinators. Maria Laura was in a pink and blue mass of loops with a blue net bow; Luisa Maria wore a pink base covered in silk roses in varying shades of pink with green net and pink feathers. Both fascinators were fussy, fun, lighthearted and slightly crazy- all the things that a fascinator should be. I thought they were great choices for these two young royal women.
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Princess Claire, wife of the King’s brother Prince Laurent, also chose a dress and jacket by Natan with a Fabienne Delvigne designed folded asymmetrical straw apricot-coloured hat. It looked like a stylized rose bloom to me and I think paired well with her patterned dress. I have waffled back and forth about this hat all day, wondering if it’s too off balance… in the end I have decided to like it.
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For the military parade, Princess Claire removed her jacket and changed into a cream coloured straw hat with ribbon and bow around the crown also designed by Fabienne Delvigne. It’s a perfect summer hat and I thought it was lovely on her.
Princess Léa (wife of King Albert’s late step-brother Prince Alexander seated behind Princess Claire to the left), wore a feathery pink fascinator. It coordinated perfectly with her tailored pink suit and looked great with her hair in a chignon. It was an understated look but I thought it was very elegant
All in all, it was a great day of hats in Belgium. Which one was your favourite?
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Royal Hats 
Astrid is certainly not wearing Chanel. It is an ill fitted suit. I just love Claire’s straw hat. It is one of her best! Paolo was ok, The fitting of her dress was not the most flattering.
I like Princess Claire’s both hats and Princess Léa’s simple pink fascinator. I think fascinators should be simple and attractive :))
Thanks for the reminder that Princess Léa was also in attendance. She looked very elegant. On mature royal ladies, I prefer simple and elegant fascinators. But on the youngest royals, I think fascinators should be frivolous and fun!
I liked Astrid’s pink pillbox, and you can never go wrong with Chanel (or Chanel-style). The daughters looked nice. The dark-haired one is adorable. Isn’t the blonde one the one that wore a ‘lampshade’ to an event recently?
I’m with you on Claire’s hat. I liked it from every angle except the front. Perhaps she thought so too, since she changed it. I liked her dress, but I’m glad she lost her ill-fitting jacket for the parade. It looked more like a breast binder than anything else. And those shoes……shudder. How could she not trip over those looooong toes?
It appears everyone got the memo to keep it conservative today, Paola perhaps a little too much so. I thought her whole look was blah, but that may have been her intent, so as not to outshine the new Queen.
Astrid looks a bit too retro 90’s boclae for me…it’s dated like it has been in a closet too long – needed some updates to look retro chic in my mind. I really like Princess Claire – like both hats – the dress is darling – that style of dress was popular in both the 50’s and 60’s and keeps coming back pretty much ever decade (tho don’t recall it in the 80’s at all and it was more streamlined when it had a really brief appears in the 90’s. This new cut around now is very close to the ones of the 60’s…and in the 60’s just the skirt shape was also worn a lot – it was called a dirndil skirt which I know dirndils as something a bit different – puffier and German/Austrian national costumes use dirndil shaped skirts. None the less – love Claire – she gets a best dressed in my book!