Kate Middleton at University College London

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After gracing the cover of many newspapers wearing a £4,000 couture golden gown from Jenny Packham on the red carpet for the latest James Bond premiere, the Duchess of Cambridge was seen on Tuesday wearing a high street dress from her closet. As she was visiting University College London’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Kate was dressed in a £16 houndstooth dress with a pussy bow, a pair of grey Hugo Boss heels and her signature Mappin & Webb white gold and diamond drop earrings.

The Duchess is used to mixing high street garments with designer accessories and high-end items.

In fact, she was photographed with the same Zara dress in January 2020.

Back then, Prince William and his wife were visiting Bradford for their first engagement of the year.

Middleton’s Zara dress was slightly more expensive when it first arrived on the racks (£95 as reported by Insider) but was already on sale at £26 when The Duchess first wore it.

The piece sold out shortly after thanks to the Kate effect.

She mixed the elegant black and white dress with a bespoke military-style Alexander McQueen dark green coat, £500 suede stilettos designed by Gianvito Rossi and a £570 crocodile handbag from Aspinal of London.

The Duchess’ fans praised her online for her elegance like Maria Luiza (@marialu18985296) who said “Kate Middleton once again shows off her elegance with a timeless dress” on Twitter. “Kate Middleton shines on her own” added Katarzyna Knapik (@TwoTower83).

More than 2,000 liked a tweet from desperate UCL Professor Vivian Hill (@VivianEdPsych) who saw all her students leave their seat to stare at the window. “This is what happens when the Duchess of Cambridge visits the university while you are teaching” she tweeted.

Zara’s trousers and dresses are among the fancy items that Prince George’s mother owns in her closet.

According to Insider, she was seen wearing the Spanish fast-fashion brand more than 23 times since marrying Prince William in 2011.

She wore Zara before her honeymoon, on royal tours, for chic engagements, sports events and even when she fed milk to a baby elephant in India in 2016.

Although the Duchess was praised by several media outlets all over the world on Tuesday for “recycling” her clothes, “thrifting” and keeping her feet firmly on the ground, others have questioned her involuntary promotion of an unethical brand such as Zara.

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The fashion industry is the second-largest polluter in the world, just after the oil industry, with mass producers like Zara’s parent company Inditex at the forefront of the dramatic ecological impact.

Toronto Star’s fashion writer Sarah Laing mentioned in a column in 2020 that Kate’s taste for Zara, Topshop and Asos should be put into perspective.

“While Kate’s Zara dress is purported to be made from ‘at least’ 50 per cent viscose, a fabric made from wood pulp sourced from ‘more sustainably managed forests,’ and produced in facilities that Zara says adhere to ‘stringent’ European Union guidelines on waste and emission reduction, it’s still fast fashion,” she wrote.

“It’s still part of the endless cycle of buying enabled by accessible price points and fuelled by fad-chasing and the delusion that clothes are meant to be worn for a season and then discarded.”

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