Meghan Markle’s Outfit for Meeting Malala Draws Mixed Reactions

“Fit is everything,” fashion designer Ralph Lauren famously observed.

So what might the 86-year-old designer have made of Meghan Markle’s latest appearance? The American actress turned Duchess of Sussex was seen walking alongside Malala Yousafzai outside Claridge’s in a pair of dramatically oversized palazzo trousers that appeared to overwhelm her 5ft 6in frame.

The petite Duchess seemed almost lost beneath the flowing trousers, which had become creased and rumpled after hours spent sitting and drinking tea at the hotel. Her voluminous cognac-colored Tove Studio coat added another substantial layer, enveloping her from shoulder to hem.

With a black Chanel clutch tucked beneath one arm and an enormous canvas tote in hand, Meghan’s outfit appeared difficult to navigate. The trousers’ trailing hem dragged across the gritty London pavement, raising the uneasy possibility that she might stumble before reaching her car.

The look was built around neutrals, a signature of Meghan’s California-inspired wardrobe, and came with a considerable price tag. She appears intent on exporting the understated “quiet luxury” style she has embraced during the past six years in Montecito to her appearances in Britain.

That made the outfit all the more surprising. After recently looking entirely at ease in a sleek black sweater and skinny-jean combination during a country pub lunch, Meghan seemed to take a sharp step backward with this latest ensemble. The style lessons she appeared to have mastered—and the wardrobe choices that have attracted a devoted following—seemed to have been abandoned.

Despite the eye-catching cost of the individual pieces, which together were valued at around $37,000, the outfit highlighted what critics have long viewed as a weakness in Meghan’s fashion choices: tailoring. Just a short distance from Savile Row, the historic London district widely regarded as the home of modern bespoke tailoring, she appeared to overlook the fundamentals of fit.

During her nearly decade-long public career as Prince Harry’s partner and wife, inconsistent tailoring has repeatedly been cited as the downfall of otherwise glamorous designer looks. It may also have been one of the earliest and most visible signs of the cultural gap between the Suits star and the Royal Family she joined.

Poor tailoring has often been the reason Meghan’s otherwise striking outfits have failed to land. She has frequently chosen ready-to-wear designer pieces—outfits whose expensive labels are quickly noted by the press—without always ensuring that they have been altered to complement her individual proportions.

The late Queen Elizabeth II, by contrast, rarely wore clothing straight from the rack. Her wardrobe was developed through close collaboration with designers and adjusted to fit her precisely. Even her shoes were handmade and broken in by her dresser, Angela Kelly, so that every public appearance could be completed with comfort and confidence.

King Charles III has long relied on his preferred Anderson & Sheppard suits and custom-made Emma Willis shirts. Queen Camilla, too, has demonstrated the value of bespoke clothing, particularly for a figure that benefits when garments are designed around the wearer rather than selected first and altered later.

The Princess of Wales also regularly turns to custom couture for major engagements. Her most important outfits are carefully constructed so that the hemline, sleeves and bodice remain perfectly positioned—even when she bends to greet a child presenting her with flowers—under the close supervision of ateliers such as Catherine Walker.

Meghan’s apparent reluctance to embrace that level of precision seemed evident from the beginning. Even her Clare Waight Keller wedding gown for Givenchy, though beautifully conceived, appeared to reveal small but noticeable details that had not been fully resolved. As she emerged onto the sunlit steps of St. George’s Chapel, creasing across the waist was visible, while excess fabric in the sleeves suggested they could have benefited from further alteration.

When she wore a grey Roland Mouret dress in July 2018, the then-working royal was photographed with pronounced folds across the garment. The dress appeared especially tight around the bust, revealing the outline of the strapless bra beneath and taking away from the intended elegance of the look.

Her green Emilia Wickstead cape dress, worn to the Commonwealth Service in March 2020 for the Sussexes’ final public appearance as working royals, made a powerful impression with its sweeping shoulder detail. Yet the garment also attracted attention for its fit, with the green wool-silk fabric appearing to cling in places that did little to flatter her silhouette.

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At the time, this disconnect felt to me an expression of Meghan’s clear incompatibility with a world and its ways that she was, despite her undisputed charisma with a crowd, really not suited for. Doing her best to dress the part of royal consort, she seemingly failed to notice that her clothes, though always eye-wateringly expensive, failed to show her to best advantage largely because they simply didn’t fit.

And as a result, to me, she looked uncomfortable, a detail that ultimately became a metaphor for the wider disconnect between herself and her in-laws.

It is a convincing theory when one charts her notably upwards fashion trajectory once under the sunnier Santa Barbara skies. Able to unleash to the full her love of skinny jeans, Chanel flats and Hermes scarves, Markle basked in the casual chic that radiated the same confidence she brought in her white shirt and distressed denim at the 2017 Invictus Games when she first appeared on the arm of Prince Harry.

For the 2022 Invictus Games in the Netherlands, Meghan, in cropped denim, black tweed Celine jacket and her favored Chanel flats, looked both polished and herself – lending an undisputed glamour to an otherwise sweaty day of men’s sport.

But even her more formal appearances stateside had a sartorial subtlety that was missing in her working royal wardrobe. In 2022, she stunned in a custom white long-sleeved off-the-shoulder gown designed by Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière. Her cover in 2025 Harper’s Bazaar wearing a tuxedo jacket by Dior’s new creative wunderkind Jonathan Anderson oozed a sleek sensibility that seemed far removed from the clunky rippling of her off the rack red Safiyaa evening gown worn at the Mountbatten Festival of Music in March 2020.

And while Meghan did in the years of their Californian exile occasionally fall victim to her penchant for long flowing trousers that were clearly better suited to a statuesque 6-ft stature, she usually avoided a fashion catastrophe.

Her tan linen Ralph Lauren trouser suit worn in New York City in April 2025 was clearly a case of oversized and overdone, but the elegant neutrals paired with her suede five-inch Manolo Blahniks managed to pull off a look that could otherwise have gone very wrong like the Claridge’s ensemble.

Today, with their new lives shrouded in secrecy, we know little of who and how the couple are being helped. Was there no stylist or dresser to tactfully remind that too long trousers paired with too big a coat would result in a silhouette that just felt sloppy?

While each piece on its own had merit – and perhaps looked more flattering seated at tea than in movement outdoors – together the effect was an explosion of confusion that, at least to me, felt like a metaphor for what life in the UK has already become for the wayward royal couple. Not part of but not out of the British Monarchy, they both exist in a kind of no-man’s land.

In what she would have invariably guessed would be a much discussed first outing, Meghan seems already to have lost her footing, at least when it comes to dress – unsure of who she is and how she can dress to effect for this new chapter in her life.