When Queen Elizabeth met with King Harald of Norway to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Anglo-Norse Society earlier this month, she gave us a better glimpse of one of the hats she wore for the first time over the late summer in Scotland. Immediately, many of us recognized it off the same block that Rachel Trevor Morgan used for this familiar turquoise hat:

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It’s interesting- while the two designs are clearly very similar (notice that subtle diagonal indent near the top of the crown and the nearly identical brim shape), these side-by-side views highlight some differences. For a start, the domed crown on the raspberry version is visibly higher while the upswept brim on the turquoise version looks slightly longer. The fabric overlay on the turquoise hat requires a seam around the top of the crown that changes the look of the hat- something unavoidable when using fabric on millinery but that leaves such a different look than the smoothly formed felt on the raspberry hat.

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Until seeing these hats side-by-side here, I did not realize that they both are trimmed with fabric embellishments- felt on the raspberry hat and crushed velvet on the turquoise one- a touch that links them in an interesting way, particularly when we see few royal hats trimmed only with fabric embellishments.

UPDATE: A third hat in this same style, this one in deep green, was added on October 2, 2021 for the opening of Scottish parliament. 

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I adore how Rachel Trevor Morgan used these subtle differences of shape (not to mention the very different colours!) to create distinct hats that, while coming off the same block, stand firmly on their own.