Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(79)
In Wallis’s day even remarriage was difficult. After she divorced her second husband, shipping broker Ernest Simpson, she and the former king had to wait a frustrating and seemingly endless six months in separate countries before they could marry.
Just to twist the knife, while the royal family agreed that the once and former king could be titled His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor, they specifically withheld the HRH appellation from the duke’s bride. In their eyes, she was only grudgingly royal. The royal family referred to her as “that woman.” It caused a family rift that lasted until the duke died. Though she is a divorcée, no such restriction applies to Meghan Markle, who will be Her Royal Highness from the moment she says, “I do.” A full-throated member of the first family.
As a gender equality campaigner, Meghan will be the first to appreciate that in Wallis’s day, few women went to college and only slightly more took paying jobs. She was from a generation where marriage was the only recognized path to social acceptance and financial stability.
Where Wallis and Meghan would recognize one another is in their unquestioned ability as networkers. Wallis’s social triumph was to import the American tradition of the cocktail hour, where her growing circle of mainly American friends dropped in to her apartment in Bryanston Court, near Marble Arch, which she shared with her second husband Ernest Simpson, for drinks and conversation for an hour or so in the early evening. She had the knack of fixing a decent cocktail for their guests—and in a prod at the English she made sure that her drinks were ice cold.
Word got around and her salon attracted businessmen, journalists, lawyers, and eventually a smattering of aristocrats and minor royalty. After meeting the Prince of Wales at a weekend house party hosted by his mistress Viscountess Furness, the future king also became a regular, often staying for dinner.
The modern-day equivalent to the salon is Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and a personal blog—and Meghan, who also enjoys a cocktail (especially dirty martinis) has used her blog, The Tig, to convey her passion for food, travel, beauty, and fashion combined with her advocacy for women’s rights and gender equality. While Wallis’s currency was cocktails and parties, Meghan’s was shared confidences—with blog posts that give glimpses into her life on the road, suggest remedies for homesickness, and thoughtful lists of books she recommends (including some by Donna Tartt, Stephen King, and Lena Dunham). By the time she closed down her internet portals following her engagement last November, her Instagram site had accumulated 1.9 million followers.
In spite of the distance in decades, where Wallis, Meghan, and, for that matter, Princess Diana reigned supreme was in the power of fashion. The so-called revenge dress worn by Princess Diana for a charity event at the Serpentine Gallery on the night Prince Charles admitted his adultery on prime-time television will go down in history as an iconic moment that defined their marriage and revealed her liberation as an independent woman.
Wallis, too, used her wardrobe as a weapon, her sleek, crafted style in sharp contrast to the homely fashions preferred by her enemy, the queen mother, whom she called “Cookie,” as she apparently resembled a cook.
While she acknowledged that she was no great beauty, she made sure that her clothes reflected the standing of her husband as ex-king, preferring to wear such designers as Mainbocher, the American designer who made the iconic wedding dress, Chanel, Givenchy, Balenciaga, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Dior. “The duchess loves Paris because it is not too far from Dior,” drawled the duke wearily on one occasion. As royal jewel historian Suzy Menkes remarks: “She worked even harder than her husband at being elegant, punishing herself by existing on little more than a single egg when her weight shot up two tiny ounces. In that absolute dedication to appearance she belongs to an era when a woman dressed to please, rather than tease, her man. There is something eternal about her style that still resonates today.”
Her signature style—sophisticated, classic, and glamorous—ensured that she regularly topped the list of the world’s best-dressed women. What became known as the Windsor style—a neat but fluid silhouette—ensured that she was able elegantly to display her diamond bracelet; her flamingo brooch covered with rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds; and the other jewelry showered upon her by her doting husband. She amassed such a collection that it made history when it was auctioned at Sotheby’s Geneva in 1987, a year after her death, fetching $50 million—a record for a single-owner jewelry collection at the time. Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, and Charles, Prince of Wales, were among the bidders.
The extravagance of her wardrobe and her lifestyle—the Windsors employed around twenty-five full-time staff attired in royal livery at their mansion in the south of France—was in marked contrast to the utilitarian ethos of the House of Windsor back in Blighty. Living well and graciously was her best revenge on the royal family who had turned their back on her and her husband.
Though much has been made of Meghan’s slave heritage, she is not the first biracial woman to join European royalty. In 1958 a mixed-race baby was born in Bocas del Toro, Panama, to Javier Francisco Brown and Silvia Maritza Burke. The family moved to New York, where their daughter, Angela Gisela Brown, proved to be a talented student. She went on to study fashion at Parsons School of Design, where, as their outstanding pupil, she was presented with the Oscar de la Renta Gold Thimble Award.
She started her own fashion label, A. Brown, before working for the fashion house of Adrienne Vittadini. In 1997, at a party in New York Angela, then thirty-nine, met a banker who was eleven years her junior. Eventually it emerged that he was also a royal, Prince Maximilian of Liechtenstein—the smallest royal nation in Europe, but the richest. After dating for two years, they married in January 2000 at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York. Among the five hundred guests were members of the royal House of Liechtenstein, including Max’s parents, Prince Hans-Adam II and Princess Marie; other members of his family; as well as representatives from other European royal houses. Though this was the first-ever multiracial royal wedding, it went almost unnoticed in the world’s press.