Birthday of Princess Alexia

Princess Alexia of Greece and Denmark celebrates her 48th birthday today. Alexia, the eldest child of King Constantine and Queen Anne-Marie of Greece, is decidedly unroyal- she was a primary school teacher in London’s inner city for several years before moving to Spain to study and work with special needs children at the Catalan Foundation for Down’s Syndrome. These days, Alexia lives a quiet life away from the royal spotlight in Puerto Calero, Lanzarote, Canary Islands in a house designed by her architect husband. While she is not often seen in hats, the hat she wore to the Spanish Royal wedding in May 2004 remains one of my favourites of all time. This simple natural straw picture hat with oversized brim, trimmed with a mass of teal and lime green ombre trailing feathers, still takes my breath away. This is the hat that made me fall in love with royal hats almost a decade ago.

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Dutch Enthronement: The Dutch Royal Family

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For the abdication ceremony, Princess Amalia, Princess Alexia and Princess Ariane looked adorable in matching flower-adorned headbands coordinating with their lovely Pili Carerra designed yellow sundresses. So sweet!

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For the inauguration, the three little princesses changed into royal blue dresses and matching hair bows designed by NATAN. I loved how the family created a united team in royal blue. Those hair bows were quite darling!

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Princess Beatrix was beautiful in one of her classic round brimless hats. This one, made of royal blue straw, had a flourish or stylized leaves in the back. I loved that she was also in blue- it made such a statement of solidarity from this family.

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Princess Beatrix was poignantly accompanied by her daughter-in-law, Princess Mabel (her husband, Princess Beatrix’s son Prince Friso has been in a coma since a skiing accident in February 2012). Mabel wore a bandeau headpiece of black feathers borrowed from Queen Maxima.

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Princess Laurentien looked very elegant in a red statement hat trimmed with matching red net designed by Fabienne Delvigne. Laurentien has worn some seriously questionable hats in the past but I thought she looked fantastic today. I think this is one of the best hats she has ever worn and I loved that she wore red (a final nod to Holland’s red, white and blue flag).

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