In her role as Royal Colonel, 5th Battalion The Rifles, the Countess of Wessex attended the regiment’s homecoming parade at Ward Barracks, Bulford Camp in Salisbury yesterday, following a nine month operational deployment to Estonia.
Embed from Getty Images
For this event, she repeated her navy moulded percher hat with cream and gold feather trim. Between the interestingly shaped straw base and swirling feathers, there’s a lot going on in this design but it’s wonderful proportion and smaller-than-it-appears scale keep it in check. With her navy coat, gloves and shoes, the hat makes for a great look for Sophie.
Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images
Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images
I imagine some of you will raise alarms at a straw hat worn in November… in good weather and with as great an accompanying ensemble as this one is, I don’t think it’s a problem. What do you think?
Photos from Getty as indicated
Royal Hats 
The looks is perfectly smart for a military inspection, but the hat should have been felt. I am sure that she has a blue felt with feathers; otherwise the Duchess always has it together.
I just checked, Sherry, and the only navy or dark blue felt hat in the Countess of Wessex’s wardrobe is this navy trilby by Jane Taylor. She doesn’t have any others.
Sigh….. this look reminds me of many of Queen Margrethe’s outfits, and not in a good way. The combination of colours, textures, focal points, weights and proportions feels thrown-together. And call me old-fashioned …. but I don’t think the shiny straw of the hat teams well at all with the heavy weight of this coat (or the shiny fabrics of 2012 and 2015, for that matter). For me this hat (which is quite nice) looks its best with the white matte summer suit of 2015.
The navy ensemble works well, but like other comments, the scarf (or blouse) is distracting.
Like the hat enormously and what a good choice for the event with its subtle military echoes. The gold feathers tie in nicely with the desert camo too. What I don’t like are the scarf and the earrings. Neither tie to anything else. A navy coat with a chocolate brown and pink scarf? Amber-look earrings? They don’t work for me. But the coat and hat are magic.
Hmm, not desert camo, too much green.
The texture of the coat’s fabric compliments the straw hat which from what I can see on a computer screen appears to be a dense and tightly woven straw. I love it and have no problems with this hat being worn in November. I particularly like the feathers and the many different shapes and types incorporated into the hat’s wonderful design. My only negative opinion is about her earrings; they seem to clash with her ensemble.
Yes, the earrings do seem to be a strange choice, but there must be a reason behind their being chosen for this particular outing.
Otherwise, the Countess is immaculately turned out – as ever!
Living as I do in a part of the U.S. where it is warm 10 months of the year, the fashion rules about what can be worn when seem to have been quite a bit relaxed from what they used to be. I like everything about this outfit, and think that the hat looks even better with this dark coat and blouse or scarf than it did with the more summery outfits of past wearings. I particularly appreciate the photos that give us the side view showing how that angle of the hat is achieved. Plus the Countess seems to really be enjoying herself at this event, judging by her many laughs and smiles.
I have not been able to find a closer view of the brooch she is wearing – is that an insignia of the regiment she is visiting?
Yes, it is the Rifles badge. If you look closely the soldiers are wearing it on their caps.
Thanks, Maja!
I agree that the color of the hat and the trim carry this one into autumn very nicely. A great repeat!
I don’t think we’re as bothered as Americans by those rules (no summer dresses after Labour Day!) it hadn’t even occurred to me that the straw hat may be wrong. It’s certainly one of her most worn titfers, she has a lot of hats she’s only worn once, this has had four outings on three very different outfits by my reckoning. This one is good, though the scarf jars for me, a plain one in a colour of the feathers on the hat would have set it off better.
I may be a bit of a purist when it comes to hat materials and seasons, but this gets a pass from me. The navy color paired with the fall-like feathers makes this hat work very well transitioning seasons, especially when paired with this great navy ensemble. If anything, her scarf looks more spring-like than anything else here. Also, excellent photos of her laughter/smiles!
Well done! Simple, elegant–the hat is perfect, suggesting a greater complexity than it actually has. (I think we must give up considering straw as a solely warm weather component of hat design!) What a lovely and flattering ensemble!
I think she looks smashing!
Oh wow! the CoWessex looks fabulous here! I love the hat-coat-scarf-earrings. So so wonderful.
I’d have preferred a felt, the feathers save it from looking too summery so it just about works for me. Overall, I think she looks very smart and as ever, she looks terrific in a hat.
the feathers makes it look a bit messy, not a fan, sorry
Despite it’s straw, it works, even now this late in the year. The hat adornment is very late fall fashion looking to me, and works well as a tie in to the military camo uniforms. It’s nice to see this take on what a royal can wear to a military function that looks right, but is not too high fastion ‘military uniform’ inspired like some of Diana’s and Kate’s have been in the past.