This morning, looking at pictures of Kate Middleton in the black and white lace Alice Temperley gown she wore for her first royal film premiere yesterday (Steven Speilberg’s War Horse), I was struck by the fact that it seems the Duchess of Cambridge has decided to stick to British designers for dress-up. There’s an interesting choice here.

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Michelle Obama is given a lot of credit and attention for the way she has, and does, use fashion to communicate a certain independence and openness and exhuberance, but I think the Duchess is turning out to be just as canny a sartorial operator. It’s just that we are so focused on the dresses themselves we don’t see the larger diplomatic picture.

After all, though the Duchess’ dress code ranges widely during the day, from Zara to Ralph Lauren to Erdem, when it comes to evening gowns the biggies have been by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, Jenny Packham, and, now, Ms Temperley — Brits all. If you think about the relative paparazzi attention accorded to gowns over day dresses, and the cost of the former versus the latter, the numbers of the first are much bigger than the second.