Material World

The news that the strange and controversial Philip Treacy creation sported by Princess Beatrice at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton has been sold on eBay for £81,000 is both generally shocking (although very nice for UNICEF and Children in Crisis, which will share the proceeds) and shockingly educational.

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This is just above the price raised at auction by the lacy — what? Tube? Stretch skirt worn as a dress? — that supposedly caught Prince William’s eye when Ms Middleton modelled it in a charity fashion show at the University of St Andrews (that went for a whopping £78,000).

So is bad fashion worth more in historical terms than good fashion?

Certainly, the very tasteful Valentino suit worn by Princess Beatrice to the wedding would never have sold for the same sum as that…what exactly was it? Pair of antlers? It looks to me like a curvy ribbon atop a commemorative plate worn as a forehead protector.

Indeed, an email has gone viral that features two stills from Disney’s feature length cartoon film “Cinderella” alongside two strikingly similar images from the royal wedding: the prince in red military jacket with Cinderella in white long-sleeved gown next to William and Catherine, and the two evil stepsisters at the ball in beige and blue respectively, with odd upthrusting toques on their head, next to Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie in exactly the same shades and almost the same hat profiles. I showed it to my children and they said, “was that on purpose?”

“Sadly,” I said, “no.”

Anyway, back to the question of why, given the hat’s silliness, it sold for so much. Why is bad fashion worth more than good fashion? Certainly neither that piece of millinery nor that lacy tube thing has any real aesthetic worth. So where does the value lie?

I think it comes down to the fact that bad fashion, at least in these reality-TV-obsessed days, tends to become more viral than good fashion (see above Disney moment); people like to make fun of of it and comment on it, and as a result it becomes not, in fact, bad fashion, but famous fashion, which then becomes a good investment because it isn’t just a piece of clothing. It’s a cultural artefact. And cultural artefacts have both longevity and value (achieving that status is, for example, why fashion was first included in museum collections).

Princess Beatrice was smart enough, it seems, to understand this, and turn it to her own advantage. The irony is, she could never have made so much for her chosen charities if she’d actually gone for understated chic.