Royal women across Europe have repeatedly been photographed wearing one another’s clothes in recent years, creating a string of twinning moments that range from vintage couture to accessible high-street pieces.
The practice has played out at state events, charity engagements and social occasions, with mothers and daughters alternating as the borrower. The examples span reigning queens and crown princesses to daughters and their mothers in the extended royal family, and include both deliberate homages and practical reuses of favoured designs.
Queen Mary of Denmark and her daughter Princess Josephine provided a recent example when Mary wore a Zimmermann blouse that royal watchers recognised as the same piece Josephine had worn at King Frederik’s birthday celebrations months earlier. Mary paired the floral, mandarin-collar blouse with a Skall skirt and classic heels for a visit to the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Queen Mary Centre, demonstrating how a contemporary designer top can bridge generations of royal style.
The late Queen Elizabeth II’s wardrobe has also been drawn on by her daughter. In February 2024 Princess Anne wore the Queen’s purple checked coat while carrying out engagements in Nottingham, pairing it with a violet dress and knee-high boots. The coat, first seen on the monarch in 2006 during a family cruise around Scotland’s Western Isles, was worn by Anne at a moment when the royal family was publicly grappling with the monarch’s illness.
Private family members have similarly swapped looks. Carole Middleton, mother of the Princess of Wales, wore a ME+EM silk shirt dress to Royal Ascot in 2022 that her daughter had first worn at Holyroodhouse in 2021 and later at the Chelsea Flower Show. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and her daughter Princess Beatrice both wore the same Amanda Wakeley design within months of each other following Beatrice’s appearance at Royal Ascot in 2017.
In Monaco, several of Princess Caroline’s daughters have borrowed pieces from her wardrobe. Princess Alexandra of Hanover attended Chanel’s couture show in 2024 in a monochrome tweed mini that originated in Chanel’s autumn/winter 1990 couture collection and had previously been worn by Caroline. Charlotte Casiraghi selected a semi-sheer Chanel gown from the house’s autumn/winter 1996 couture collection for the 2017 Rose Ball, a dress Caroline had worn in the 1990s and again in 2000.
Denmark’s Princess Isabella, third in line to the throne, borrowed a Max Mara white trouser suit from Queen Mary for her 2022 confirmation, accessorising it with a diamond-and-pearl brooch once belonging to Queen Alexandrine and loaned from Queen Margrethe. Queen Mary had been photographed in the same three-piece on official visits in 2017 and 2019.
Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden has been seen updating garments from her mother, Queen Silvia. In 2017 Victoria wore a striped yellow co-ord that Silvia first wore in Moscow in 1978, repurposing a hat scarf as a pussybow necktie and adding a scarlet clutch. Victoria’s daughter, Princess Estelle, has also worn pieces previously seen on her mother: Estelle appeared in a lime tulle dress from a 2020 high-street collection at a 2023 opera performance celebrating King Carl XVI Gustaf’s jubilee, a design Victoria had worn on official visits.
A similar mother-to-daughter exchange occurred in Spain when Crown Princess Leonor wore a patterned Dándara shirt dress to a performance in Madrid in June 2022, and Queen Letizia wore the same breezy midi the following month at a UNICEF meeting on mental health. In the Netherlands, Princess Alexia wore Queen Máxima’s cold-shoulder Oscar de la Renta dress at a 2023 christening ceremony after Máxima had worn the gown at a 2019 entrepreneurship summit.
Among more intimate family moments, the Duchess of Edinburgh and her daughter Lady Louise have shared pieces from the same designer wardrobe. Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, has been photographed repeatedly in a navy Roland Mouret coat that her daughter later wore, and Sophie was observed wearing Lady Louise’s beret at the annual Easter Mattins service at St. George’s Chapel when her daughter was absent.
The examples demonstrate a range of motives and meanings: practical reuse of high-quality garments, homage to a predecessor, and the creation of visual continuity at public events. They also reflect changing attitudes to sustainability and the visibility of vintage clothing in public life; royals have increasingly mixed couture and accessible brands on official and social occasions.
Photographs and public records of these appearances provide a timeline of shared pieces that spans decades. The overlap of couture and high-street fashion in these exchanges underscores both the enduring nature of certain designs and the personal links that garments can signify within royal families.