After looking at all the royal hats we saw in 2014, you, dearest readers, narrowed down your choice for the royal with best overall millinery style to just five candidates. While the race for second, third and fourth place was very tight, our winner ran away with the category (and with our hat loving hearts, I expect!), I’m pleased to share the results as follows:
The Duchess of Cambridge
Countess of Wessex
The Duchess of Cornwall
Queen Elizabeth (see all of Her Majesty’s hats of 2014 at this post)
And your 
choice for best overall royal hat style last year was…
Queen Máxima! While some of Queen Máxima’s hats topped your list of least favourites last year, the overall contents of her millinery closet remain so popular with royal hat watchers that she easily won this category. Several of you commented about her fearless, risk-taking approach to millinery (which accounts for her hats topping our favourite and least favourite lists) and noted how exciting it is for us spectators to see what she will wear next. I’m sure that you all join me in eagerly looking forward to what hat surprises Máxima has in store for us this year!
One of these lovely royal ladies celebrated a milestone birthday today- check back tomorrow afternoon for a look back at some of her many fantastic hats.
All hats above worn by Queen Máxima were designed by Fabienne Delvigne. Please click on each photo to link back to the original post with additional information on each piece.
Photos of Queen Máxima from Semana; Hollandse Hoogte via Corbis; Andreas Rentz via Getty: Patrick van Katwijk and Patrick van Katwijk via Monarchy Press Europe; Koen van Weel via ANP; Alexander Koerner and Mark Cuthbert via Getty; Patrick van Katwijk via Corbis; Franco Origlia/Stringer and Michele Porro/Stringer via Getty
The Dutch Queen definitely had some of the best, but some of the least preferred, hats of 2014. My family and I respect her for her stylishness and millinery bravery.
I love both QMax and QElizabeth’s styles. Both are truly lovely ladies!
I agree wit Maxima being fearless. She wears so many different styles of hats, and that makes her so interesting to follow. The hits ánd misses
Queen Máxima wore some of my favorites and there were only a couple, like the antlers and the bandage that I loathed. But I’m petite so I couldn’t carry off many of her hats. If I closet raided, I would take the Countess of Wessex’s hat collection, due to its variety, the conservative yet eye-catching designs and their wear-ability in everyday life.
Yes Queen Max is my favorite as she is always surprising us with her choices beautiful or ugly. For me Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge is second, she is more conservative with her choices yet they are always in such good taste. Now I am on the lookout for 2015 hats.
I voted for Queen Maxima as number one best hat wearer. She does take risks and so obviously risks getting into the least favourite group. I hope we see some of her spectacularly good hats again in 2015 and some new ones too.