As a nation that loves big things – animals, vegetables and minerals – Jennifer Lopez is a woman after our own green and gold hearts having just put on a week of ‘Big’. Big diamonds, a Big party, a parade of Big dresses and a newsmaking Big Hat, that has set off a backlash that Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex could surely deeply relate to.
For the men’s finals, the singer sashayed into the hallowed Wimbledon grounds clad for a go in the Royal box wearing in a Ralph Lauren wrap dress and the sort of main character, dramatic hat that Zelda Fitzgerald would have picked for an Antibes beach day with Ernest. It was a look meant to make a grand statement, unfortunately the statement many took away was that the Jenny From The Block hit maker couldn’t read. According to the Royal box rules, “Ladies are asked not to wear hats, as they tend to obscure the vision of those seated behind them.”
The reaction was swift and sharp-clawed. Comments on news stories and social media included:
“That’s obnoxious. She needs 2 extra seats just for the hat.”
“You should do your homework lady!”
“Lopez thinks she is above the rules. Arrogant and rude.”
If this feels like a story you have read before then you have. In 2018. When the same hat rule and J’accusing internet came for Meghan when she too arrived in the Royal box with a hat.
Let me set the scene: The actress was freshly installed as the Duchess of Sussex when she walked into the Royal box with Kate, now the Princess of Wales, carrying a Maison Michel straw fedora that she proceeded to not wear at all. Que? The Sherlocks of social media and the Sun were quick to explain the reason was she hadn’t realised the Royal box rules.
“It seems the former Suits actress had planned to wear the hat, before she realised the Royal Box rules”, the paper reported, however despite the “blazing heat”, “she wasn’t allowed to actually wear it”.
According to the Daily Mail, the “Duchess had to remove her favourite panama because headgear is banned in the Royal Box” which made it sound like she had turned up with a primed explosive device and not an $800 hat.
When L’Affair Du Hat broke, it was during a time when Meghan faced a drumbeat of clucking chiding and was repeatedly hauled over the coal for her supposed failings as a duchess.
It began just three days after her wedding to Sir Beard-A-Lot Prince Harry in May 2018 when the newlyweds took a break from mainlining connubial bliss and attended their first – and what would be, only – Buckingham Palace garden party. The duchess wore a perfect pale pink dress, a Philip Treacy hat and a pair of slightly the wrong shade nude hose thus kickstarting the Meghan-Get’s-It-Wrong cavalcade.
Her first real royal test and the report card, per much of the internet, read must try harder.
A few weeks later, in June, came her first Trooping the Colour, for which the former actress wore a pink Carolina Herrera two piece which was, shockingly, devoid of sleeves. Having the brazenness to expose her elbows within sightlines of the sovereign saw her lambasted for her supposedly “inappropriate”, rule-busting choice of outfit.
Reports at the time claimed she had already overlooked one Royal fashion rule: exposing her shoulders” and had “rebelled against the regal dress code”.
As one highest voted comment put it, Meghan’s fashion choice demonstrated that she “has no respect for England or it’s traditions. A very bad choice indeed.”
Such was the noise you would have thought she’d turned up with Robsespierre as her plus one not worn an summer’s dress on a summer’s day.
Days after that, Meghan was back in the headlines for Getting Everything Wrong.
On June 14 Queen Elizabeth put the form guide down long enough to whisk her new granddaughter-in-law away by Royal Train to show her how to open a bridge. Meghan chose a sublime white Givenchy number however her failure to wear a hat saw her in for it. As the Daily Mail reported a few months later, “Meghan, still new to the intricacies of Palace protocol, didn’t realise that this meant she was expected to” wear a hat and “Her lack of deference, even respect, had been duly noted, particularly by the Queen’s senior staff.
One senior figure close to the late Queen said “I don’t think the Duchess fully understood” the hat non-negotaiable.
Two weeks after that, Meghan crossed her legs while appearing in a formal photo with Queen Elizabeth rather than some demure legs-together tilting. So shocking was this contravention of supposed protocol I’m surprised authorities weren’t called in.
Then, barely a month later, in July, came L’Affair Du Hat at Wimbledon.
You see the pattern. In under eight weeks, on five occasions, field days were repeatedly had about how badly wrong Meghan was getting things in her new job as a duchess.
Later, during the Sussexes’ Oprah Winfrey interview, she revealed she had been left to fend for herself and was offered no training. “Unlike what you see in the movies,” she said, “there’s no class on how to … how to speak, how to cross your legs, how to be royal … That was not something that was offered to me.”
What was couriered over to help Meghan was one of Queen Elizabeth’s most trusted lieutenants Lady Susan Hussey. While reporting suggests that Her late Majesty’s gesture was one rooted in kindness, sending an octogenarian lady-in-waiting was about as useful as arming a knight with a bendy pool noodle to take to Agincourt.
(In 2022 Lady Susan would set off a race row that saw her binned, for a bit anyway, after she grilled domestic abuse campaigner Ngozi Fulani about where she “really came from” during a palace reception.)
And so the recent JLo hat meltdown revives a brutal period of time for the Duchess of Sussex. You have to wonder different things might and could have been if instead of getting a pasting every time Meghan failed to follow a rule she did not even know existed in the first place she had been given some grace and latitude to learn the ropes.
Speaking to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang last year, she described that period of time as “a little bit inauthentic” and that she hadn’t been able to dress the way she wanted to dress.
If, on landing in California in 2020, Meghan had held a ritual bonfire of the nude hose, would we begrudge her?
It seems doubtful that JLo would have spared a moment’s thought to the internet’s twittering and nipping about her hat but at least now there are two women who have been sent to Hat Jail. Ironically, despite one of them actually still being an HRH, only one of them might ever get a repeat invitation into the Royal box. Who wants to beat that JLo wears an even bigger hat still?
Daniela Elser is an editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with Australia’s leading media titles.