Meghan Markle’s fashion faux pas that shocked onlookers during her first overseas tour just months after marrying Prince Harry

When American actress Meghan Markle traded the glitz and glamour of Hollywood for the strict grandeur of the British Royal Family, the world anxiously awaited her first overseas tour with her newlywed Prince.

But as the Royal rookie touched down in the island of Tonga, south of Fiji, in October 2018, eagle-eyed onlookers couldn’t help but notice that the new Duchess had made a rather startling fashion faux pas.

Accompanied by Prince Harry, Meghan was seen disembarking a private jet at Fua’amotu Airport dressed in a striking £380 Self Portrait dress during their 16-day trip across New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and Tonga.

Her bright red floral dress, which mirrored the colour of the Tongan flag, was accompanied by a Christian Dior Clutch and Manolo Blahnik BB pumps.

But her otherwise impeccable outfit and air of Royal prestige was to be slightly dampened by the dress label which remained on show for at least five minutes as the Duke and Duchess walked along the runway.

The fashion error stunned several onlookers online, who jokingly speculated that perhaps the Princess had deliberately left the tag on in the hopes of returning the impeccable dress after the event had ceased.

Meanwhile, others critically questioned why her colleagues had failed to mention the glaring issue prior to her disembarking the flight.

However, Good Morning Britain presenter Charlotte Hawkins defended Meghan’s gaffe – insisting that it was ‘easily done’ and might have happened because the label is often hidden in different places in women’s clothes and you don’t automatically know where to look.

Ms Hawkins was discussing the slip up with the rest of the GMB panel shortly after it occurred when she defended Meghan’s mistake.

She said: ‘It’s easily done, you put it on and you forget. They put labels in all different places; sometimes it’s in the back, sometimes it’s in the bottom, sometimes it’s in the sleeve.’

But it was not the first time that Meghan, who earlier this month made her Paris Fashion week debut to attend the glamorous Balenciaga show, has turned heads with her contemporary approach to fashion or indeed fallen victim to an unfortunate fashion faux.

While the royal dress code has traditionally been strictly followed by members of the Firm over the decades, Meghan has often made the controversial decision to deliberately go against archaic Royal protocols. 

Challenging dress codes with her penchant for off-the-shoulder dresses and bold nail colours, she was considered unconventional by royal standards.

‘The bottom line is that the outfit always has to fit the occasion,’ royal expert Myka Meier of Beaumont Etiquette previously told The Daily Mail. ‘It has to be modest, elegant and appropriate, and it should never distract from the role.’

But during an engagement in Birmingham in March earlier that year, Meghan, who was just weeks away from her fairytale wedding to Prince Harry, failed to remove the loose criss-cross stitching that was holding together the back of her $298 navy Italian stadium-cloth wool coat by J. Crew.

The ‘X’ stitching, also known as a tailor’s tack, is designed to keep the shape of the garment while it is being transported or on display.

But the stitching should be removed once the garment has been bought – and certainly before it is worn for the first time.

Pictures showed Meghan and Harry greeting crowds outside an International Women’s Day event, while, unbeknown to the attendees, the stitching was on clear show for the numerous photographers seen at the event.

When the Duchess made her debut at Trooping the Colour earlier that year, she arrived in an off-the-shoulder Carolina Herrera dress in a soft blush pink shade with a matching Philip Treacy hat. 

Yet while fashion lovers lauded her modern and elegant choice, several royal onlookers were sceptical of the new Royal’s outfit choice. 

The reason? Her shoulder-baring frock broke with royal tradition, a move that in hindsight might be seen to have foreshadowed the Meghan’s challenge to the monarchy.

The dress was a striking departure from the typical demure looks normally favoured at such occasions events.

Laura Windsor, the UK’s Queen of Etiquette, previously explained that for royal occasions such as Trooping the Colour, being modest and conservative is key.

‘Shoulders should always be covered, and the golden rule of dressing is to adhere to protocol. Protocol is there for a reason as every time it is breached, a member of the Royal Family becomes headline news.

 ‘Meghan was a member of the Royal Family and should have respected protocol. By breaching protocol, she was sending a pretty clear message.

‘In my view, that made her a poor decision-maker.’

She wonders if Meghan felt – mistakenly – that she could single-handedly overhaul the dress codes of the Windsor’s.

‘I would expect an emotionally mature person to respect the tradition and protocol of a country. Meghan chose to take her own independent path with her fashion choices.’

To some royal insiders, this was more than just a sartorial choice, it was a message. Royal women have long adhered to an unwritten but closely followed set of style rules, which dictate appropriate hemlines, sleeve lengths, and colour palettes.

Off-the-shoulder gowns are typically reserved for evening events, not daytime occasions steeped in military history. But Meghan, ever the Hollywood starlet, brought a touch of red-carpet glamour to the palace balcony.

Then, in December, as the Duchess cradled her growing baby bump during an appearance at the British Fashion Awards, she glowed in an asymmetrical Givenchy as she presented a prize to Clare Waight Keller, the designer who had done her £100,000 wedding dress. 

However, while it seemed to be an entirely elegant, clean-cut display, there was one aspect of the outfit that raised an eyebrow or two.

Her hands, that showed off her marriage sparklers and baby bump, were adorned not with the clear or neutral tones of nail varnish normally expected of women in the British Royal Family, but a vibrant shade of red-black.

But while many accused Meghan of ‘breaking royal protocol’, royal correspondent Omid Scobie defended her, telling Harper’s Bazaar: ‘There’s no actual protocol about dark nail polish.

‘It’s simply about being appropriate – we’d never see this at a royal engagement.

‘[The British Fashion Awards ceremony] is a celebration of fashion and there’s a lot more flexibility on what one can wear.’

Indeed, Meghan adhered to the Queen’s nail polish preferences when the world focused in on her hand during her engagement announcement on November 27, 2017.

While showcasing the stunning ring designed by Prince Harry himself with one stone from Botswana and two diamonds from Princess Diana’s personal collection, Meghan’s nails were painted a nude pink.

Sticking with a chic, understated manicure, the Duchess wore CND Shellac to marry her Prince at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19, 2018.

Salon DryByLondon revealed they were behind her neutral nails and mixed the shades Unmasked and Negligee together to create the opalescent look, according to British Vogue.

In other instances, Meghan also sparked controversy after appearing to go against the Royal norm by championing her fashion staple: the mini dress. 

The appropriate length should never be more than three or four inches above the knee with leg slits kept to a minimum as modesty reigns supreme and while it’s not said to be strictly enforced, the late Queen was believed to prefer royal ladies to wear tights for formal events

Meghan however bucked this trend, championing her fashion staple the mini dress, wearing a tuxedo style by Judith & Charles for a performance of Hamilton in 2018.

The Duchess also caused some controversy when wearing a Reformation sun dress with thigh-high slit while visiting Fraser Island in Australia.

While seemingly unlikely that the Duchess’ Royal price tag moment was a deliberate act of defiance, it served as a clear indicator that the former American actress was perhaps slightly out of her depth as she embarked into the hectic world of official engagements under the world’s microscope. 

It was also perhaps to be indicative of what was to come for Harry and Meghan who just 15 months later would sensationally step back from senior Royal duties, a bombshell decision later dubbed ‘Megxit’.

Meghan, and indeed Harry, sought to showcase themselves as more ‘regular’ Royal figures, unafraid of failing to fit the mould and go against the conventional grain.

According to royal biographer Tom Quinn writing in his 2023 book, Gilded Youth, when Meghan married into the grandeur of the British Royal Family she had been left ‘shocked by the Palace protocol and by the fact that she was not and never could be first in the pecking order’.

He added: ‘She was a global superstar but was being told what she could and could not do, what she could and could not say. She hated it.’

While promoting her second series of her Netflix Series, Meghan told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang of the ‘inherent tension’ that exists between ‘trying to be relatable’ while also being a Duchess.

Appearing to take a thinly veiled swipe at her former life in the Royal fold, Meghan said:  ‘It was different several years ago where I couldn’t be as vocal and I had to wear nude pantyhose all the time!’

The Duchess later added that it ‘felt a little bit inauthentic’.

Previously, Meghan has touched on a number of things she had to sacrifice in order to be a royal, such as her lifestyle blog The Tig, which she ditched in April 2017, a few months before her engagement to Harry.

Indeed, according to Quinn’s book, the royal staffer felt that the traditions of the Royal Family came as a shock to Meghan, who ‘always felt in control of her own destiny’.

Quinn added that Meghan ‘undoubtedly felt constrained’ by the Royal Family and that she and Harry needed to ‘do their own thing without consulting the big royal machine’. 

Meghan’s tendency to go off-script and rebel against the constraints of royal life were glaringly obvious during the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s tour of Southern Africa in 2019.

While stopping to speak to ITV journalist Tom Bradby, Meghan gave a remarkably candid interview about how she was struggling to cope with the media scrutiny on top of being a new mother and a newlywed.

During the notorious interview she thanked Bradby for asking if she was OK, claiming that ‘not many people have asked if I’m OK’.

Then, when when asked if it had been a struggle, she agreed with the reporter’s analysis.

While Meghan received praise in some circles for her openness, it was not the sort of answer many working royals would have been expected to give during a royal tour.

Indeed, the interview, along with the trip, became something of a PR disaster for the Royal Family.

According to royal author Valentine Low, it was Meghan’s feelings of restriction caused by life in the firm, coupled with her yearning to monetise her royal title, that  ultimately led to the couple’s high-profile departure from the Firm, dubbed ‘Megxit’.

Writing in his tell-all book Courtiers, Low claims that Meghan’s desire to ‘earn money for herself’ which prompted the couple to abandon their duties entirely.

Low writes: ‘Some suspected that in the end she wanted to make money. And the only way she was going to do that was by leaving her royal life behind and going back to America.’ 

Indeed, following the second part of With Love, Meghan, alongside her recent Paris Fashion Show debut, it seems that the former actress has turned her attention firmly to her lifestyle brand and a possible fashion venture, a far cry from her short-lived Royal tenure strongly dictated by protocol.