On February 27th, Princess Kiko, who is President of the Japanese Anti-Tuberculosis Prevention, attended the 66th Japanese Tuberculosis Prevention Convention in Fukuoka City.
For this event, she repeated a khaki silk patterned pillbox hat made of the same fabric as her suit. The hat was trimmed with a pleated band on the side which echoed the pleated collar of her jacket. Design qualms aside, I think the fabric choice on this pillbox dooms it to a drab and dowdy existence- it ages Princess Kiko well beyond her years and that makes it a failure in my book. Will any of you join me in calling for the retirement of this hat?
Princess Kiko wearing this same hat at an autumn garden party in November 2006
Designer: unknown
Previously Worn: November 9, 2006
Photos from Fukuoka Prefecture and Pool/Reuters/Corbis via Corbis
Royal Hats 
The hat and suit are awful. They look more appropriate for a much older lady. I simply don’t like the suit, but the hat would have been better in a brighter color, and a different shape and size would have suited her petite frame better.
As you say, aging, boring, dull, and tedious. She seems so sweet and yet her clothes are so awful. The Empress has much more style.
A really cheap looking fabric, like curtains found in a cheap hotel along the highway somewhere, and yes used them at one time many decades ago, take this entire outfit and hat and toss, don’t even give it away for it is so ugly looking. Her smile is what makes the day!
The khaki silk suit is drab and boring and so is the pill box hat, which also looks badly made. I would bin the lot.
Nice
The attire plus hat of any Japanese royal is almost always so predictable. I personally love the sage color of Princess Kiko’s suit and hat. If this has been worn in the past, I’m sorry, but this is the first time I’ve seen it. I have to admit her hat and suit is very predictable, but can we expect anything less?
So often, the photos of Japanese a Imperial events look as though things are happening inside a generic hotel ballroom. Likewise, that hat seems to be made from the fabric on one of the padded seats on that ballroom’s dining chairs.