Say what you want about the Sussexes – they know how to take a good photo. Perhaps the best ever taken of them was, pertinently, during their final official week in the UK: in the rain, flashbulbs framing them almost beatifically, smiling. You probably also remember Meghan Markle’s dress: the turquoise Victoria Beckham shift, buoyant and optimistic in its vibrancy.
Now, in the second part of Netflix’s Harry & Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex has explained the thinking behind this and some of her other looks from their farewell tour; the red hot Safiyaa dress and the emerald green Emilia Wickstead dress among them. ‘Until that last week in the UK, I rarely wore colour. I never wanted to upstage, or ruffle any feathers, so I just tried to blend in. But I wore a lot of colour that week,’ she explains in episode five. ‘It just felt like, well let’s just look like a rainbow’. Princess Diana might have famously chosen black for her revenge dressing moment, but Meghan made her own defiant statement in a spectrum of bright, unapologetic colours: this is me, this is us, each punchy, primary look seemed to say.
Visually, the farewell tour looks were a striking departure from her newly-minted Duchess looks which tended to be muted: camel, caramel, beige. ‘There was thought in that,’ Markle explains in one of the first drop of Harry & Meghan episodes. ‘To my understanding, you can’t ever wear the same colour as Her Majesty if there’s a group event, but then you also shouldn’t be wearing the same colour as other more senior members of the family’. Beyond protocol, there was a more relatable reason why she chose those non-colours: she wanted to fit in, to Get it Right. ‘So I could just blend in. I’m not trying to stand out here. There’s no version of me joining this family and trying to not do everything I could to fit in. I don’t want to embarrass the family,’ she says.
By March 2020, there is a sense that she is already dressing for her next chapter. It’s in the colours, sure. But look at the capes too, as seen on the Safiyaa and Wickstead dresses, what do they call to mind? Superheroes, of course.