On October 9, 2009, Queen Elizabeth II attended a service of commemoration at St Paul’s Cathedral to mark the end of combat operations in Iraq. She wore this black boater hat with black sinamay brim and fabric covered crown trimmed in black blossoms by Angela Kelly, made by Stella Mclaren, one of several in this shape added to her wardrobe a decade ago.
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Embed from Getty Images
Image from Getty as indicated
May 7, 2009: Bangor, Northern Ireland. The rear shot is fantastic, the brooch is surrounding a blossom on the “wrong” side of HM’s coat.
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I have to agree with the other opinions so far expressed — this is not my favorite hat shape for HM, I find the boater style more flattering with a longer or straighter hairstyle, which The Queen has never had. Also, all those doo-dads… excuse me, “black blossoms”… look, in my opinion, kind of silly in a “what were they thinking” sort of way. She even had to move her brooch to the other side than usual to accommodate them! I would have liked this ensemble a lot more if it had just been the checked fabric on both the hat and the coat.
It looks from the 3rd photo in the first gallery like the dress underneath also has black blossoms — have we ever seen the dress on its own?
This does have rather a lot going in, at the time I rather liked it, but I think I agree with Lesleyc that perhaps it is too much of a good thing, and an edit would have helped.
The shape isn’t my favourite from her staples either…
I’m not too keen on this particular boater hat for Queen Elizabeth though it was worn at a sombre occasion.
I think softer more curving brims are better for her and more flattering. This design and colour combination is hard to love but shows The Queen’s willingness to try something a little bit different.
Some of the other boater examples are softer and work for me in the prettier colours.
The hat is better than the lace covered one the other day, but I don’t think the black embellishment was needed around the crown. I do think there’s something to be said for the old saying “having too much of a good thing” and that describes the coat perfectly. There’s a check fabric, with a garland of matching fabric with black embellishments, then we have odd splodges of black across the coat along with a small kick pleat on the coat. They’ve thrown everything at this coat and it doesn’t look good.
I don’t think the tailoring is great – there’s puckering at the darts, the check can’t be matched decently as the darts go all the way up to the shoulder seam, the cross-body frill is causing the check fabric to pull across the lower part of the coat. A plain black or grey coat would have looked so much better.