The Duchess of Cambridge had the pleasure of visiting two new pictures of herself at Britain's National Portrait Gallery this week. These images will be familiar from June's centenary issue of Vogue, in which photographer Josh Olins signalled the Duchess's country credentials via a lurking Land Rover and a wash of dreary browns.
Intriguing details about the shoot have been emerging. Apparently, the Duchess formerly known as Ms Middleton was prepared to bend to Planet Fashion's will in terms of costume, styling and make-up. Unlike her wedding day, she let someone else apply her maquillage, renouncing her penchant for leaden black eyeliner. However, despite her otherwise pliant submission, one royal command remained non-negotiable – namely: "No one touches the hair."
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In Princess Diana's footsteps
Britain's Prince William and his wife Kate tour India's Taj Mahal, 24 years after William's late mother, Princess Diana, visited the icon of love.
Instead, the Duchess arrived at the shoot sporting rollers, the robustly old-fashioned method favoured by her hairdresser, Amanda Cook Tucker, brought in tow as stylist. For Tucker is the woman behind The Hair.
Groomer to William and Harry as infants, for $600 a day plus expenses, Tucker accompanied her royal charge on the Diamond Jubilee Visit to the Far East in 2012 and on her recent trip to India and Bhutan. She was Prince George's second hospital visitor, after gynaecologist Marcus Setchell, meeting the new heir even before Ma Middleton, and bringing Kate's outfit and baby seat. As Marie Antoinette had her trusty Monsieur Leonard, so Kate has her Mandy.
In some ways, their mutual creation might be deemed a success, in that it is a phenomenon, a brand identifier, a thing. Google confirms that the second-most searched for question about Catherine Windsor is "Who does the Duchess of Cambridge's hair?", the sixth a demand for styles.
Meanwhile, her tresses play a significant part in what analysts refer to as the "Middleton effect", the copycat consumer tendency that Newsweek has valued at $2 million. Before the royal wedding in 2011, sales of blonde hair colour outstripped brown two and a half times over. Afterwards, it was brunette all the way. This year's chestnut resurgence has been linked to the event's five-year anniversary and the sepia tones on view during the recent tour.
Long hair remains the preserve of little girls, youth, a maidenhood just beginning to spell sex. It is the stuff of fairy tale; the accessory that every heroine must boast. She will unleash it to ensnare her prince a la Rapunzel, or use it to bewitch in the manner of Keats's Belle Dame Sans Merci. When Pelleas caresses Melisande's luxuriant locks in Debussy's opera, it is the transgression that marks their undoing; Renaissance brides let their hair fall untrammelled, a symbol of youth, sex and fertility.
The Duchess's royal ambitions began in girlhood, with a poster of her prince on her wall. (She denies this, but the story lingers.) She yearned to be a princess and a princess needs princess hair. Kate may have been merely middle-class, but in this respect she was qualified for the job.
At first there were the tangled tresses of your average Sloane, sexed up for that moment when she appeared on the St Andrews catwalk in the transparent frock that propelled her from girl next door to official love interest. As their commitment grew, so did the scale of her do, until it reached its current proportions: big, bouncy and bizarrely out of proportion with her slender frame.
Hairdressers notoriously detest it, longing to take their scissors to it. "It's awful," carps one prominent London coiffeur, on condition that he remain anonymous. "A schoolgirl affectation – no wonder Vogue covered it with a hat." The Queen is also rumoured to favour a pruning.
Princess Diana also started public life with a too-formidable do. Sam McKnight, the man who banished her helmet hair in favour of shorter, sexier styles, recently told the Telegraph: "She was a bit nervous about the slicked-back appearance. Like many women, she used to hide behind her hair. But she looked her best when she didn't do anything to it. She knew that – but she also knew that the public wanted to see her do the princess thing."
Her daughter-in-law may lack Diana's patrician pedigree, but this makes her only more committed to doing the "princess thing". Kate's hair is her badge-of-pride-cum-security-blanket. And she controls it as she controls her body – with an iron will – enslaving herself to it as a symbol of royal duty.
Hairdressers notoriously detest it, longing to take their scissors to it. 'It's awful,' carps one prominent London coiffeur.
The Duke and Duchess have done much to modernise our perception of royalty, be it with their frozen pizzas or displays of familial love. Curious, then, for Kate to cling so doggedly to this one prominent anachronism. If she really wants to reconcile monarchy with modernity, she has nothing to lose but those rollers.
Telegraph
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