Similar belted dresses retail for under $100.
Unfortunately for Jesir, the brand Kate wore to the Freud show, the Kate effect came a little too late. The company folded in August after 13 years, another victim of the British recession.
A few months earlier, an endorsement from Kate might have been enough to save the day. For the Kate effect is no flash in the pan.After she wore a cream Reiss dress for her engagement photos, the brand s annual profits doubled.Pity poor Martyn Vines, former managing director of Jesir, who said Kate looked absolutely stunning. It was a wonderful feeling. I felt very proud but also tinged with a bit of sadness. No one could have blamed the girl for wearing McQueen or Dior to such a sparkling, glamorous event, but former PR girl Kate seems quite determined to telegraph a very specific message to her future subjects via her clothing choices: I m normal. Kate actually bought the Hobbs coat she wore on Sept. 22, 2011, during a shopping trip to London s Sloane Square, where she was spotted by the blogger Social Beautify.
Kate paid full price for the coat, 369 (about $577), but today, before it sold out, the A-line coat was on sale for just 182 (about $284) on the Hobbs website. Kate s high-street habits are yet another illustration of her savvy wooing of the British public. Britain is still in the grip of a grinding recession, with GDP flatlining and austerity measures and government cutbacks biting hard. Kate spent more than an hour talking to the public Tuesday, which had lined up just to see her and ask whether William had sent her Valentine s Day flowers from the Falklands. She was overheard telling the head of the charity behind the Brink Bar, Action on Addiction, that she had indeed received a card and flowers from her husband that morning.
