Meghan Markle, the Queen, & Kate Middleton Have All Worn a Lot of Brown Lately

It's been one week since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their plans to step down (opens in new tab) from "senior" royal family duties, and a lot has happened, to say the least. We've seen statements from the Queen (opens in new tab), trips to Canada, family meetings (opens in new tab), and...a lot of the color brown? If you're a fan of the royals, you've probably noticed that the shade has showed up in the outfits of the Queen, Kate Middleton, and Markle more than usual.

The head honcho herself, the Queen, is well-known for her preference for bright colors (opens in new tab) that can be seen for miles. Her daughter-in-law Sophie, Countess of Wessex, even said so (opens in new tab) in the documentary The Queen at 90: "Don't forget that when she turns up somewhere, the crowds are two, three, four, 10, 15 deep, and someone wants to be able to say they saw a bit of the queen's hat as she went past."

One day before the couple announced to the world the big news, Markle was photographed at an engagement at Canada House wearing an all-brown outfit I would die for.

So when the Queen showed up to church on January 12, four days after the announcement, wearing head-to-toe beige—well, it was a statement, to say the least. "She knew she would be photographed, and that the most recent pictures of her would be published in the papers alongside the most recent pictures of Meghan," speculated Elizabeth Holmes, author of the forthcoming book, HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style, to Harper's BAZAAR (opens in new tab). "To have them in the same shade, I took very much to be a sign of unity."

According to the Very Well Mind' (opens in new tab) s principles of color psychology, the shade of brown stands for strength and reliability. It's a color that is "often associated with resilience, dependability, security, and safety." The theory seems to hold true, especially since Middleton was seen wearing two pieces of brown (opens in new tab)—a khaki coat and a brown turtleneck—as she drove her two oldest children to school. But hey, maybe she just was in an all-over brown kind of mood?

To quote Holmes: "It could be a coincidence, but I think perhaps not."

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