One of the first royals to ever wear a miniskirt was Princess Anne in the 1960s and 1970s, long before Princess Kate or Meghan, Duchess of Sussex hopped on the trend.
According to a royal expert, the Queen Mother found the style to be “ugly” and expressed her disgust.
Ingrid Seward, the editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, wrote about Princess Anne’s youthful fashion sense.
She claimed Anne “enjoyed dressing daringly, choosing to wear very short skirts, much to the chagrin of her Grand Mother”.
According to Ms Seward, the Queen Mother hated miniskirts as she believed knees were “so ugly”.
Princess Anne, who was 18 at the time, participated in her first official public engagement in 1969. After 50 years, the Princess Royal is still regarded as one of the hardest-working royals.
Anne, then a teenager, wore an ivory coatdress and a miniskirt to visit troops in Germany in 1969 and looked effortlessly stylish.
The Princess Royal accessorised with black gloves, a leather handbag, buckled mules, and a stunning cherry-red hat with an enormous buckle.
According to royal fashion etiquette, skirt hemlines should be modestly long, namely no more than four inches above the knee.
Princess Anne’s 1960s fashion would have been notable because of her structured miniskirt and thigh-grazing coat dress, which likely defied the rules of proper royal attire.
Pictures taken only a few years later demonstrate the huge difference in skirt length that Princess Anne underwent once she turned 20. Miniskirts were swapped out for modest full-length gowns and below-the-knee suits.
These days, many royal women will avoid wearing miniskirts. The garment has a variety of possible risks, such as flying up in strong winds.
In 2014, it was claimed that Kate, Princess of Wales was required to wear longer hemlines by the late Queen Elizabeth II.
