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The shocking truth about Kate Middleton's 'reworked' dress

Did she really wear the same dress?

kate dress
Leanne Bayley
Director of Lifestyle & Commerce
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When the Duchess of Cambridge attended the National Portrait Gallery on Tuesday evening, she stepped out in the floral Alexander McQueen gown she famously wore to the 2017 BAFTAs. With reports flying around that the Duchess 'reworked' the sleeves on the dress and transformed it into a short-sleeved gown, we were all ready to enrol the Duchess of Cambridge onto the next season of The Great British Sewing Bee and commend her for her alteration skills.

kate reworked

Kate in 2019 wearing her Alexander McQueen dress

But on closer inspection - and we mean heavily zooming into LOTS of photos of the flowers on the dress and the placement of each leaf (we take our job very seriously here at HELLO! - we have come to the conclusion that Kate didn't rework the dress at all. That's right, it's a totally different gown but with the same print. We assume at the time of the BAFTAs back in 2017 Kate was given a couple of options for the gown and decided on the off-the-shoulder style. The other one - with the cap sleeves - was left hanging in her wardrobe hoping to be worn one day.

kate reworked old

Kate wearing her Alexander McQueen dress to the BAFTAs in 2017

RELATED: Kate Middleton's best BAFTA dresses over the years

Thankfully Kate decided to wear it a couple of years later and created a flurry of articles about her customisation skills. In truth, it's a good lesson - to rework an old favourite. If there's a dress hanging in your wardrobe right now that's a bit unloved, you might want to ask yourself if you could rework it into something that's more on trend, or right for you.

In other Kate news, she did switch up her purple Gucci blouse for a royal outing earlier in the day. Yes, the pussy-bow blouse she wore to attend the Henry Fawcett Children's centre was worn with the buttons at the front instead of the back - a deliberate mistake, we assume.

VOTE: Did Kate wear her blouse the wrong way around? 

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