The Great Cardigan Debate
- princegeorgepieces
- Apr 24, 2016
- 3 min read
First: A quick update. Monique Jessen of People Magazine revealed that George wore Trotters’ Little Boston Plane Slippers when he met the Obamas. The navy, velvet slippers featured an embroidered red biplane on the front and fastened with a velcro strap. They originally retailed for an affordable £18, but they are no longer available. (Side note: Chrissy’s dad is a pilot, so if you see these slippers become available on eBay, do let us know! She’d love to purchase them to tuck away for her future children – in honor of her dad.)
Now back to Charlotte’s adorable ensemble from earlier this week. On Friday, m&h released photos of Princess Charlotte’s dress, worn in the portrait celebrating HM’s 90th birthday. The liberty print ensemble feature concentrated smocking on the center chest and a tiny floral print on everything – including the collar. Charlotte’s first dress from the company featured a larger and more colorful floral print, smocking across the entire chest, and a white collar. We’re curious – which do you prefer?
In addition, m&h released photos of the cardigan they claim Charlotte is wearing. Meanwhile, Pepa & Co. continues to assert the cardigan is theirs. So we decided to break down the details for you.
Both cardigans feature a similar stitch and edging. The collar of the dress covers up the buttons, so those cannot be used to identify what Charlotte is wearing (although we do think the dress’ collar is petite enough that it would struggle to fully cover the 2 buttons of the Pepa & Co. cardigan). The 3 key main differences are the shoulder seam, the color, and the side on which the cardigan buttons.
As you can see, the Pepa & Co. shoulder seams appear lower on the shoulder and are fairly flat, while the m&h shoulder seams appear higher and more raised. As higher quality images of the family photo have emerged, we can see that Charlotte’s shoulder seams feature a distinct raise, which would most closely resemble the m&h cardigan.
The second difference is the color. Pepa & Co.’s Classic Knitted Cardigan comes in Taupe and Camel – neither of which sound like they would perfectly match the Dusty Pink Amaia Tights Charlotte wore. The m&h cardigan was designed to complement the dress in the same colorway, so it would make sense for Kate to purchase the matching cardigan and avoid dressing Charlotte in many differing shades of ivory and pink in one outfit. This would prevent the photographer's team from having to edit and color correct the entire outfit to match. However, the photo m&h released of their cardigan does appear darker than the cardigan Charlotte is wearing. It is challenging to match the color of the cardigans with the photo due to a photographer’s creative license to edit. The photographers and graphic designers for each of the companies likely edited and color corrected their respective images of the cardigans, and Annie Leibovitz almost certainly edited the colors in the photograph she took. Therefore perfectly matching the color from these images is next to impossible.
The final difference we’ve found between the cardigans is the side on which they button and how they lay in the front. The Pepa & Co. cardigan is designed to overlap on the sides, fully covering the front when the buttons are fastened. The right side closes overtop the left side. The m&h cardigan, however, closes left side over right side and is designed to fan open in the front, giving a peak at the dress underneath. If you look closely at the top of Charlotte’s cardigan, it also closes left side over right side, and the cardigan clearly vs open in the front to exhibit the lovely pattern of her outfit. For these reasons, we feel that the m&h cardigan is the cardigan Charlotte wore.
What do you think? Is Charlotte wearing the cardigan by Pepa & Co. or m&h? Or some mysterious, yet to be identified brand? Share your thoughts in the comments or tag us @hrhgeorgepieces on Twitter.
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