On Thursday, Queen Elizabeth visited Watergate House to mark the 100th Anniversary of Government Communications Headquarters (GCH), the UK’s Intelligence, Security and Cyber Agency. For this visit, she repeated her sky blue hat with hourglass curved crown and gently sideswept brim (straw on top, the same wool silk as the crown and coat on the bottom), The photos taken on this day finally give us a close-up view of the hat’s trim- cut green feathers, amber beaded gold sprigs, and large, round amber and darker blue glass beads.
This design’s trim has really grown on me, particularly as the use of glass beads on hats is not something we often see. Is the shape still a bit clunky? Yes. But it has presence (even with that stray bit of thread on the brim!) and that’s always a good thing when it comes to a royal hat.
Embed from Getty Images
Does this view change your thoughts about this hat at all?
Photos from Getty as indicated
Since you pointed out that bit of stray thread, that’s all I can see now! Someone should have noticed and pulled that off for her. I like the green feathers and the amber beads, nice touches.
Maybe it’s the time of year, but the hat has just a touch of Mardi Gras vibe that’s festive as we hope for spring!
The hat is OK but the coat is too big – somehow there is just too much material and it is so badly tailored.
I agree totally with your two points.
This is a relatively new coat, incidentally, and it’s never fit. The Queen’s shape may be changing, but then the forms used to make her clothes need to change too.
HatQueen, I agree with you and your pun – “This design’s trim has really grown on me.” At first, I didn’t care for the bold, seemingly haphazard green accent on (yet another) medium blue hat, which BTW is an excellent color for HM.
The first two outings of this hat brought up some lively discussion here at RoyalHats, namely about horses, Scottish folk music, and the “wrong” placement of the trim on many of HM’s hats. This was fun reading today, being such a gloomy and cold Sunday afternoon – thanks, HQ. How vividly I now recall back in August for the hat’s premier, trying to make comments with my iPhone while sitting in the sand on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Like JamesB reminded us, spring is coming folks!
Sorry, I forgot to add this: Does anyone recognize this royal blue hat from May 8, 2017? It’s not the same hat with the enormous swooping feather, since the edge of this one is trimmed in black. Just curious.
The hat you mention is linked in this post and indeed, it’s different than this hat with the swooping feather. One is not a renovation of the other- she wore the mystery hat in May last year and repeated the ‘swooping feather’ hat in September.
HQ, thanks for helping out with the two links. I tried twice but in vain to post the mystery hat link earlier. You have the magic touch.
The lovely weather in London this week gave us perfect light for this lovely hat. The trim is very pretty, quite whimsical. I really do like this hat, I just wish the coat was better tailored, it really wrinkles. Never mind, always good to see HM hatting about again, spring is coming folks!