Kate Middleton lands job with fashion chain Jigsaw | Daily Mail Online Kate Middleton lands job with fashion chain Jigsaw Last updated at 12:08 01 December 2006 Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton has a job with fashion chain Jigsaw, the company said today. The 24-year-old, who has been dating the future king for three years, has become an accessory buyer for the high street brand. A spokeswoman for Jigsaw said: "We can confirm that Kate joined our staff two or three weeks ago as an accessory buyer for Jigsaw and Jigsaw Junior. We can't comment any further." Miss Middleton studied art history at St Andrews and graduated from university, where she met William and shared a flat with the Prince, a year-and-a-half ago. Well-loved womenswear chain Jigsaw is owned by fashion tycoons John and Belle Robinson - close family friends of Kate's. Their company Robinson Webster Holdings also owns the Kew womenswear stores. According to The Sun newspaper, Miss Middleton has already helped out on a fashion shoot where she ran errands, fetching cups of tea and snacks.

Kate has been described as a walking advert for Jigsaw, often being seen wearing its cardigans, floral print skirts and dresses. It will be a major coup for the brand to have the woman being tagged as a future Queen on board. According to the Jigsaw website, its footwear and bags are manufactured mainly in Italy and Spain "using the finest materials, usually high quality leather". Belts come from Italy, with some more artisan-crafted pieces made in Asia, while scarves, gloves and hats are made in the Far East and Europe. Its jewellery has been sourced from Europe, India and Mexico. Kate Middleton 'set up children's clothing company but scrapped it to work for Jigsaw' - Mirror Online News Kate Middleton 'set up children's clothing company but scrapped it to work for Jigsaw' Kate, who was dating future husband Prince William at the time, hoped to copy her mum Carole’s success in business Share Kate had designs on setting up a children's clothing company (Photo: Getty Images) Share Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing!

Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email The Duchess of Cambridge set up a children’s clothing company but had to scrap it after it became mired in debt, according to a new book. Kate, 31, who was dating future husband Prince William at the time, hoped to copy her mum Carole’s success in business. She planned the clothing line as part of the Middleton family’s Party Pieces website and ­travelled abroad to meet fashion experts and suppliers. View gallery According to the book, Kate the Future Queen, she came up with a business plan between skiing trips in Klosters with William, who had at the time just enrolled at Sandhurst Military Academy. She spent hours finding high-quality children’s clothing and flew to Milan where she used her basic Italian to set up deals with a manufacturer. She even won the backing of ­clothing ­company Viyella to be a ­partner. But the book says she “hit obstacles early on” in 2006 and was soon operating at a loss. It says: “Kate decided that she might be better off working for a well-­established fashion company instead.

In the run up to Christmas 2006, she got a plum job with high street ­clothing chain ­Jigsaw as an ­accessory buyer.” Kate went on to become a ­ fashion icon – sparking the “Kate Effect”, where clothes sell out within hours of her being seen in them. Most Read Most Recent Most Read Most Recent Kate Middleton: Princess Flawless | The Independent Profiles Kate Middleton: Princess Flawless Search for any blemish on the character of the woman who is to marry Prince William and you will do so in vain. But will sheer niceness be enough to protect her on the hazardous journey ahead? Friday 22 April 2011 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online The turning point in Kate Middleton's life was the weekend she joined a royal deerstalking party in Scotland in October 2007. Kitted out in camouflage jacket, jeans, boots and pearl earrings, she gamely took instructions in handling a bolt-action hunting rifle with silencer and telescopic sights, lay in the heather and blazed at a stag-shaped metal target a mile away. She had never, before that weekend, been seen with a gun in her hands.

She'd never shown any interest in blood sports, although she'd been photographed standing beside Prince William during pheasant shoots at Sandringham. But the autumn of 2007 was different. It was make-or-break time for the Berkshire bourgeoise. She and Prince William had broken up in April that year, while on holiday in Zermatt. They had fallen out, allegedly, because of his conviction, at 24, that he was too young to marry, and his habit of confiding in ex-girlfriends about the state of his feelings. Things had improved a little since April. They had both attended the Concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium in the summer, but had sat two significant rows apart and were now "just good friends". The autumn trip to Balmoral was an olive branch from Prince William, which Kate seized with alacrity. Heedless of the cries of anti-blood sports campaigners and the tabloid press, oblivious to suggestions that she was shamelessly sucking up to the royals, she threw herself into the stalking. And it worked. The scales fell from William's eyes. By December, she'd moved in with him at Clarence House, his father's London home.

Three years later, there was another stalking trip to Scotland. This time Michael and Carole Middleton, Kate's parents, attended a "country pursuits" house party hosted by William at his father's private residence, Birkhall. The soon-to-be in-laws were, like their daughter, given lessons in shooting, prior to a day's stalking in the hills. They were, it was popularly understood, being instructed, groomed and blooded in the dark arts of royal fun. Has it all been about stalking? Has much of Kate Middleton's life been driven by her parents' (and her own) desire to snare a prince? Has her role as royal fiancée been targeted from her teens like a ground-to-air missile? Is there a vivid, interesting, independent woman somewhere in there behind the inoffensive good looks, the sensible clothes, the impeccable manners?

You can savour this week's image of Kate sailing along the King's Road in her skimpy summer frock, buying £50 honeymoon tops in Whistles and looking like a girl without a care in the world – and then register the tough, leather-jacketed security man beside her, a symbol of the royal protection she's "enjoyed" since 2006 and the royal incarceration that will slam behind her next week, as surely as the gates of Alcatraz behind Al Capone. Is she prepared to put up with the famously dysfunctional royal firm because her true love happens to be part of it? Or is the role of Princess (or Duchess – her future title is unclear) one she has doggedly pursued for much of her 29 years? Born in Reading, Berkshire, five months before Prince William, she spent her baby years in Amman, Jordan, where her parents worked for British Airways. Her father's ancestors were Yorkshire tradesmen and a hymn-writing clergyman, her mother's Durham coalminers. Returning to England at four, she attended St Andrew's School in Pangbourne, then the cloistered Downe House, whose cheerful address is Cold Ash, Berkshire.

At Marlborough she was a house, then school, prefect. At St Andrews University, she studied history of art and gained a 2:1. She worked for a time as a junior accessories buyer in Jigsaw, the unimpeachably fashionable, but not aggressively trendy, high-street women's clothing shop, until she left and worked for her parents' party supplies company. No ripple of discontent, no scintilla of attitude, no smidgeon of showing-off or inappropriate behaviour has ever blotted her escutcheon. Those who encountered the young Middleton (Catherine at home, Kate at school) vie with each other to hymn her blandness, her vanilla niceness. Schoolpals, according to Hello!, called her "a kind-hearted and sensible soul who rarely caused upset among her peers". Imagine. University classmates said, "You barely noticed her. She very sweetly just slipped in and out of class." "Every time I look at young Miss Middleton," observed the writer Vicky Woods, "I feel I've had a tiny spritz of Keep Calm and Carry On behind each ear." Her art history tutor barely remembered her at all. "She did nothing to draw attention to herself," was his judgement.

"Very discreet." Her final-year dissertation on Lewis Carroll's photographs sounds promisingly controversial (are all those raggedy-urchin girls the fantasy portraits of a closet paedophile?) but she "dealt with the issues sensitively and intelligently". Of course. One longs for some blip of anarchy – An evening of drunken excess? A passionate mistake with a bad-ass drummer? – to disturb the millpond of Middletonian milquetoast mildness. One longs in vain. The stalking, though, is interesting. Kate was on William's case from her teens. She first clapped eyes on him when his school, Eton, played hers, Marlborough, at hockey, and she watched his lanky, handsome frame gallop up and down the pitch. When William came back, aged 18, from his 10-week gap-yah expedition to Chile at the end of 2000, Kate went off on exactly the same expedition a month later (where she was, recalls her instructor, "an impressively strong and hard-working teenager" who naturally "loved" the children she briefly taught).

A suspicion has often been voiced that her mother, Carole, chose St Andrews University for her elder daughter because Prince William was going there. But was there something similarly directional about her parents sending her to Marlborough, which routinely turns out MPs' wives – Samantha Cameron, Frances Osborne, Sally Bercow – if not royal princesses? And when she and William met, how did she engineer herself a place in the cottage they shared (as housemates, no more) in St Andrews town? We don't, of course, have the faintest idea. It's more likely that Kate Middleton, far from being a manipulating throne-grabber, is an uncomplicated wysiwyg: what you see is what you get. She's beautiful (though a bride's diet has temporarily given her Ulrika Jonsson's bony sternum), elegant, smiley and demure and she looks good in old-fashioned, brightly coloured high-street frocks, elaborate hats and knee-high boots. Her apparent disdain for designer couture may be an affectation but may equally be a dislike of fussiness.

("I would have loved to dress Kate Middleton but I'll have to wait until she kind of catches up a bit with style," said Dame Vivienne Westwood crushingly.) She laughs easily but not noisily. She lacks Princess Diana's repertoire of flirtatious glances, and the Duchess of York's hoydenish vulgarity. She has learned to sing the Welsh national anthem in faultless Welsh. She will, in due course, be the only Queen of England ever to hold a degree, and will be able to discuss art with confidence in any royal palace. She will be charming and chatty with foreign heads of state and, given her family's line of work, will be an absolute whizz at throwing parties. She and William will have amazingly beautiful children. Faced with the prospect of becoming the Duchess of Clarence, Cambridge, Sussex or Windsor, she has expressed a preference to be plain "Princess Catherine". That seems about right. We should wish this very English rose, descended from coalminers and clergymen, every happiness and a sotto voce "Good luck".

And we should retain that image of her this week in Chelsea – a smiling 29-year-old girl with a £32m sapphire-and-diamond ring, and the dead weight of history, clamped on her finger. A life in brief Born: Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, 9 January 1982, Reading, Berkshire. Family: Born to Michael, a businessman and Carole, a former air stewardess. She has two younger siblings, Philippa and James. Education: Educated at St Andrew's, a private school in Pangbourne, then Marlborough College in Wiltshire. After spending her gap year in Florence studying at the British Institute, she read history of art at the University of St Andrews in 2001, where she met Prince William, and graduated with a 2:1. Career: In 2006 she was hired as an accessory buyer for fashion chain Jigsaw. She left a year later to work for her parents' company, which sells children's party paraphernalia. She says: "I was quite nervous about meeting William's father, but he was very, very welcoming, very friendly.

It couldn't have gone easier for me." They say: "I love where she comes from and who she is. You see them together and they're easy with each other. They look at each other with genuine interest and love. It takes a very special person to step into that world." Dame Helen Mirren More about: WILLS' GIRLFRIEND LANDS A JOB IN THE FASHION BUSINESS WILLS' GIRLFRIEND LANDS A JOB IN THE FASHION BUSINESS SEND TO A FRIEND 1 DECEMBER 2006 Prince William 's girlfriend Kate Middleton is known for her style savvy and her keen eye for the perfect accessory - whether handbag or jewellery. So it's no suprise to hear that her sartorial skills are now being called upon by the glamorous fashion industry. The 24-year-old has started a new job as an accessories buyer for upmarket clothing chain Jigsaw, according to a British newspaper. She has been taken on by tycoon John Robinson, at whose Mustique home she spent Easter with her royal beau. The businessman is a close friend of Prince Charles.

It is believed Kate, who has been working on setting up a childrenswear website, is hoping to learn more about the retailing and marketing side of the industry. And the down-to-earth Berkshire lass has already made a favourable impression. Kate apparently mucked in on a fashion shoot in Shepherd's Bush, West London. "There's nothing snooty about Kate," a source told The Sun. "She was determined to make herself useful during the shoot - and that included making tea. Some of the staff there did find it a bit odd being waited on by the potential future Queen," they added. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge biography | birthday, trivia | British Royal Consort | Who2 Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge Biography Name at birth: Catherine Middleton Kate Middleton married Britain’s Prince William on April 29, 2011 and is now known as the Duchess of Cambridge. She was still known as Kate Middleton when she met the future king while both were studying art history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. They became friends while sharing housing with other students in 2001, and began dating in 2003. Middleton graduated from St. Andrews in 2005 with a degree in art history.

She moved to London after graduation, and in 2006 began working as an accessory buyer for the fashion chain Jigsaw. Her status as a royal girlfriend generated intense media interest into 2007, when she and William ended their relationship. But they reunited later that year, and engagement speculation intensified. On 16 November 2010, the Royal Family announced that Kate Middleton and Prince William were engaged to be married. William is second in line to the British throne (behind Queen Elizabeth and her son, William’s father, Prince Charles ), making Kate the likely future queen of Great Britain. The Royal Wedding was held on 29 April 2011, a Friday, at Westminster Abbey in London. Queen Elizabeth announced before the wedding that she had bestowed the title of Duke of Cambridge on William, making Kate the Duchess of Cambridge, and the Queen also gave William and Kate the Scottish titles of Earl and Countess of Strathearn — possibly a nod to their meeting at St. Andrews. Buckingham Palace announced on December 3, 2012 that the Duchess was pregnant with her first child.

The child, a son, was born on 22 July 2013; he was named George Alexander Louis and is known as Prince George of Cambridge . He is now third in line to the throne, behind Prince Charles and Prince William. The Duchess’s second child with Prince William, a daughter named Charlotte Elizabeth Diana , was born on 2 May 2015. Extra credit The Duchess of Cambridge has two siblings: a sister, Philippa (called Pippa, born 6 September 1983) and a brother, James (b. 1987). Pippa was the maid of honor at her sister’s wedding… Kate Middleton’s wedding dress was designed by Sarah Burton of the Alexander McQueen fashion house… Kate Middleton’s parents are the founders of Party Pieces, a mail-order company that (according to its website) “specialises in providing top quality products for children’s parties and delivering them to customers within a few days with a minimum of fuss”… British tabloids nicknamed her “Waity Katie” as her relationship with Prince William stretched on without an engagement… Many sources have called her Catherine since her engagement and marriage.

According to the Royal Family’s official website, “Miss Middleton uses both names equally, and she has never expressed a preference for either Catherine or Kate since her engagement to Prince William. Catherine is the name that Miss Middleton grew up with in her family, and Kate is the name that she tends to use in a work context”… Kate Middleton was born at Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, according to a 2009 story in The Daily Mail. Kate's not precious. She mucked in at Jigsaw | London Evening Standard Kate's not precious. She mucked in at Jigsaw Monday 21 July 2008 09:28 BST Kate's not precious. She mucked in at Jigsaw Kate's not precious. She mucked in at Jigsaw 1/2 Belle Robinson Fierce work ethic: Belle Robinson's latest venture is The Shop at Bluebird 2/2 Kate Middleton Chats to everyone: Kate Middleton Fierce work ethic: Belle Robinson's latest venture is The Shop at Bluebird As a tall, curvy girl, I know just how unrewarding fashion can be. Surrounded by a tiny, perfect clientele, in cool minimalist stores I feel like an outsize Alice in Wonderland.

The waistband of a skirt mysteriously splits. I can't even get my hand down the skinny cigarette pants. But Jigsaw is different. Its column dresses are a godsend; skirts flatter but don't pinch. This season's 1950s-style floral prints - retro but not mumsy - are officially the hit of the summer. Hardly surprising when Belle Robinson, the creative force behind the chain, is a fashion Amazon. At 5ft 10in and a voluptuous size 16, she insists: "I am our typical customer." Belle and her husband, John Robinson, who founded Jigsaw back in 1971, understand mature women. Their store was one of the first to pioneer size 16. "I've had five babies, with all the dieting and training in the world my body is never going to be the same shape," she tells me calmly. But she's not about to give up wearing low-cut frocks and glitter cardigans. Or cut her hair. Defiantly she breaks all the style rules. And she loathes cosmetic surgery.

"I think the man who wants you Botoxed and siliconed and Calogened up to the nines wants an accessory on his arm. He doesn't really respect women or want a friend and companion." She and John are one of the most powerful couples in British fashion (there are 45 Jigsaw stores in the UK and nine in the US). Five years ago they launched the label Kew. Turnover for the group last year was £81.5 million. Our interview takes place at Belle's latest venture - The Shop at Bluebird on the King's Road. Located in the basement of The Bluebird restaurant, the high-end boutique stocks achingly cool designers such as Zac Posen and Junya Watanbe. But the shapes are generous, the cut realistic. "I wanted stuff that wasn't terrifying." And none of the sale staff are snotty. Belle makes damn sure of that. Until December 2006 you'd probably never even heard of the Robinsons. With five children, aged 19 to 11, they keep a low profile. But all that changed when Belle offered Kate Middleton a job at Jigsaw. The press went mad.

Acres were written about how the Robinsons were close family friends of Kate's parents. Belle was hailed as Kate's "fairy godmother" and a key fixer at the court of "King William". Paparazzi besieged Jigsaw's head office in Kew. It was claimed Kate was art-directing fashion shoots. Today she reveals the truth for the first time. "I'm amazed at how much people have made of a very simple thing. I don't know Kate well. Some people asked us if we were happy for Kate and William to go and stay in our holiday house in Mustique with some friends. They're not allowed to pay for it but in return they would make a donation to the local hospital. And I said: 'Yeah, fine.' "Through that, as a thank-you to us, Kate supported a couple of Jigsaw events we did. Then she rang me up one day and said: 'Could I come and talk to you about work?' She genuinely wanted a job but she needed an element of flexibility to continue the relationship with a very high-profile man and a life that she can't dictate.

She's going to be dictated to when she's needed and not needed." Together Belle and Kate worked out a job in accessories that she could do three days a week. "And I have to say I was so impressed by her. There were days when there were TV crews at the end of the drive. We'd say: 'Listen, do you want to go out the back way?' And she'd say: 'To be honest, they're going to hound us until they've got the picture. So why don't I just go, get the picture done, and then they'll leave us alone.' I thought she was very mature for a 26-year-old, and I think she's been quite good at neither courting the press nor sticking two fingers in the air at them. I don't think I would have been so polite." Kate mucked in at Jigsaw. "She sat in the kitchen at lunchtime and chatted with everyone from the van drivers to the accounts girls. She wasn't precious.

A lot of people have distorted it to say we're friends with her parents but I've only met them four times." Despite what many people believe, Belle says Kate got no official support: "Only if she were a fiancée would she get support. She said she can turn to William's press guy if there's a political problem with the press, but only if it's serious." Belle and Kate's working relationship ended last November when Kate quit her job, saying she needed "some time to herself". There were no hard feelings and Belle would never criticise Kate for not wanting a full-time job. She saw first hand the demands made on her - she jokes that her own girls would never want to be a royal girlfriend. Although Belle's family live a privileged life, they have a low media profile and aren't often seen on the London social circuit. They own a "movie-set" Wiltshire manor house and 400-acre farm. There's a hill-top villa in Mustique for holidays. Close friends include actors Natasha McElhone and Richard E Grant. And Belle has been able to work full-time because all five children have been weekly boarders - "far better than being at home with a nanny," she says briskly.

But for all her energy and confidence Belle knows what it's like to feel a failure. She disappointed her father, a Cambridge-educated businessman, by leaving school without A-levels. "I had no formal qualification or training at all." She still doesn't know how to use a computer. She married young (to an Army officer) and by her early twenties was a broke single mother of two daughters. "I was living in Bath on £250 a month, hardly able to buy petrol." Age 27 she met John at a dinner party set up by a mutual friend. "Eventually he invited me to a party three weeks later but I assumed he'd been blown out by someone because he only rang the night before. But John's quite shy." By 1993 she was pregnant with their son Jack and she and her two daughters had moved into the Wiltshire manor, which has been in John's family for 300 years. The older girls see their father, who lives in Kuwait, but "because they've lived with John since they were three and four, he is their father. John has always been incredibly kind and fair.

There's none of that 'his children', 'my children'." Together, they had two more girls, now 11 and nine. In 2004, they finally got married, with Jack giving Belle away. Jigsaw actually started as a student backpacker's dream. Belle reveals that 40 years ago, John, then studying at agriculture college, hitchhiked around Europe with a friend. "He ended up in Istanbul, found these Afghan coats, lugged them home and sold them. It was such a success they went back the next summer with a van." Even the name Jigsaw is counterculture - John took it from the film A Clockwork Orange. And if you think about it the store has always employed cutting-edge architects, from Nigel Coates, who designed a two-storey copper column in the shape of a phallus for the Knightsbridge store, to minimalist John Pawson. "We've made a point of using exciting buildings." From the beginning, Belle worked alongside John at Jigsaw "otherwise I'd never have seen him." She set up children's label Jigsaw Junior, then gradually moved to womenswear. Belle has a fierce work ethic.

She and John leave the Wiltshire house at 6am on Monday morning and are based in London for the next three days. They operate pretty independently - we are halfway through breakfast at the Bluebird café before I realise the man with grey/blonde hair at the next table is her husband. Jigsaw is run as a family firm. Employees come on holiday. But you sense the pair are never off-duty. "My husband will meet some woman at a dinner party and within minutes he'll be touching the fabric of her dress or looking at the label or the seams," she laughs. Weekends are sacred, especially Sunday night - "dormitory night" - when the children pile into the master bedroom with their special blankets and curl up to watch a DVD. The couple hate the way the high street is being destroyed by greedy London landlords driving up rents. "John says he could never have got Jigsaw off the ground if he was trying to do it now." Which is why she started The Shop at Bluebird ("my sixth baby"), inspired by their favourite shop, 10 Corso Como, in Milan. The interior is frankly bonkers - with neon signage, purple walls and stuffed animals. There's a smoothie bar and books everywhere.

Her dream is to start a proper plus-size label for sizes 14-20. "I'd like to think that by the time you're 40, you've worked out what body shape you are; you're no longer a slave to trends. If you want to do fashion, do it through accessories, great shoes, great necklaces. Speaking personally, I just couldn't look like something off the catwalk even if I wanted to. Better to give in gracefully than look ridiculous." The Shop at Bluebird, 350 King's Road, SW3, 020 7351 3873. Poll: Brits Want Royal Baby to Have a Normal Job | E! News UK Poll: Brits Want Royal Baby to Have a Normal Job By Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Should Prince William and Kate Middleton 's baby someday work 9 to 5? A U.K. polling firm, Ipsos MORI, posing the question reports that a majority of Britons would like to see the future monarch have an ordinary, paid job to experience the daily grind they shoulder every day.

Per London's Evening Standard , the poll found that 65 percent of the public is in favor of the third in line to the throne working in the real world alongside his or her subjects before assuming royal duties while only 20 percent is against the idea. Not that the royal baby is destined for serfdom. NEWS: Queen Elizabeth hopes the royal baby arrives soon JOHN STILLWELL/AFP/Getty Images On the contrary, the Prince or Princess of Cambridge could follow in Will's footsteps and become a search-and-rescue pilot. Or maybe dive headlong into the fashion industry as Kate briefly did in 2006 when she served as an accessory buyer with the clothing company Jigsaw. The poll also found, surprisingly, that despite the public's professed desire, only three in 10 think the child should attend a state school with more than half strongly disagreeing. Seven in 10 also felt that it's "impossible" for children of royalty to have a normal upbringing. NEWS: Royal baby poll: What should Will and Kate name their son or daughter Alas, most of the royal family isn't as familiar with the rat race, engaging in work of a different, less stressful and more privileged kind.

After serving in the Royal Air Force and Navy, Prince Charles has spent much of his energy supporting various philanthropic causes (including his most well-known, The Prince's Trust), raising environmental awareness and carrying out royal engagements. In fact, the Prince of Wales is considered the "hardest-working" royal. PHOTOS: Check out Kate Middleton's birthing suite Chris Jackson/Getty Images The same, however, might not be said for other members of the monarchy. Take Charles' younger brother, Prince Andrew, for example. While he fought in the Falklands War in the early '80s as a helicopter copilot, the Duke of York has since served as a U.K. trade envoy among other duties but has come under criticism for spending millions of taxpayer money on first-class travel, luxury hotels and other perks on official trips abroad. On the other hand, Princess Anne competed as a member of Great Britain's equestrian team at the 1976 Olympics and now spends most of her time serving as patron of more than 200 charities. Charles' youngest brother, Prince Edward, has dabbled in film and television production, but taken heat for using his royal connections for financial gain.

Meanwhile, the world waits anxiously for the arrival of Will and Kate's baby, which could be any day now , especially after Kensington palace insiders told E! News exclusively that Kate's two or three days past her official due date. Brazil E! Is Everywhere This content is available customized for our international audience. Would you like to view this in our US edition? E! Is Everywhere This content is available customized for our international audience. Would you like to view this in our Canadian edition? E! Is Everywhere This content is available customized for our international audience. Would you like to view this in our UK edition? E! Is Everywhere This content is available customized for our international audience. Would you like to view this in our Australian edition? E! ist überall Dieser Inhalt ist für internationale Besucher verfügbar. Möchtest du ihn in der deutschen Version anschauen? E! Is Everywhere This content is available customized for our international audience. Would you like to view this in our German edition? E! est partout Une version adaptée de ce contenu est disponible pour notre public international. Souhaitez-vous voir ça dans notre édition française ? E! Is Everywhere This content is available customized for our international audience.

Would you like to view this in our French edition? Yes! Will's Cup of Tea | Vanity Fair Twitter Kate Middleton, with Prince Charles behind her, at Prince William’s graduation from Royal Air Force Cranwell, in April. From Gamma/ Eyedea/Zuma Press. On June 16 royal photographers waiting to capture Britain’s Prince William, 26, in flowing velvet robes outside St. George’s Chapel, in Windsor, were caught by surprise. Just before the start of the 660-year-old ceremony, in which the Prince was to be made a Royal Knight of the Garter, a car containing his younger brother, Prince Harry , drew up to a side entrance. Climbing out of the car with him and following him to the Galilee Porch of the church was Catherine “Kate” Middleton, a lithe, five-foot-nine-inch brunette, who has been Prince William’s girlfriend for more than four years. Middleton, 26, was smartly dressed in a dark suit with tiny white polka dots and a snappy black-and-white headpiece.

She and Harry and Helen Asprey, personal secretary to both Princes, joined a gaggle of royals, including the Duchess of Cornwall and the Countess of Wessex. All of them waited for William, second in line to the throne after his father, Prince Charles, to enter the chapel, where his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II would make the official appointment. But when William, walking beside his father, came into view, wearing a floppy hat with ostrich plumes, the anachronism of the costume overwhelmed Middleton, who gasped, “Oh my God!,” and she and Prince Harry had a giggling fit. The un-regal behavior might have been hyped derogatorily by the notoriously acerbic British media had it not been for the fact that Kate’s mere presence at the ceremony signified a far better story: that Prince William’s romance with his former university roommate seems destined for marriage. It was the signal Britain has been waiting for since Middleton was publicly outed as the Prince’s girlfriend in 2004. View more images of Kate Middleton. Also: video . Above, Middleton at the 2006 wedding of Laura Parker Bowles and Harry Lopes.

By Ian Jones/© Telegraph UK/Zuma Press. Since graduating from the picturesque medieval university of St. Andrews, in Scotland, in the summer of 2005, the poised young woman from the small village of Bucklebury, in Berkshire, has been pursued by photographers—a phenomenon jokingly called “Middletonmania,” which is eerily reminiscent of the overwhelming media attention suffered by the late Princess of Wales. Middleton has been photographed at horse races and polo matches, on the ski slopes, leaving nightclubs, and—in the most troubling echo of Diana-stalking—she was hounded on January 9, 2007, her 25th birthday, as she left her Chelsea apartment to get into her Volkswagen Golf to drive to work. A pack of paparazzi got dangerously out of control when one of them broke ranks to approach her, and they swarmed around, yelling. It was the first and only time in her relationship with Prince William that the young woman seemed almost to lose her temper. Her usual smile was replaced by tightly closed lips, and her bluish-hazel eyes were stormy. Normally, she beams prettily for the camera, sometimes with a flick of her long, thick, glossy hair.

At the Garter ceremony, she was her usual glowing self. She had plenty to smile about. This was the first time Kate had attended an official royal engagement in public. She has now been at two royal weddings, on William’s behalf. “He sent out a message,” says the *Daily Mail’*s Richard Kay, who was one of Princess Diana’s closest confidants in the British media. “[He’s saying,] ‘I’m not there, but this girl is very important in my life. She’s representing me. Read what you like into that.’ And, so, one tends to read into that, well, the girl is almost in the homestretch to be his wife.” Echoing Kay’s sentiments, British bookmakers are now taking money only on details surrounding the wedding date—which many think will be in 2009. Some royal correspondents believe an engagement could come by the end of this year. Woolworths at one point even planned memorabilia china bearing the couple’s faces.

If these predictions are right, then Middleton, the granddaughter of a store clerk and a builder, will become a princess—an unprecedented elevation, which is both a sign of the times and, perhaps, a tribute to the caliber of the young woman. “In all these years,” says a relative of the Prince’s, “without any training, quite simply she has never put a foot wrong. It’s remarkable.” Still, there are plenty of snobbish insults from people who, despite Middleton’s obvious attributes, believe that the monarchy needs to stop marrying “out” of its class. Kate is the daughter of former flight attendants Michael, 58, and Carole, 53, who now run a mail-order and online party-paraphernalia business called Party Pieces.

One member of the young polo-playing set in the county of Gloucestershire—known in the British media as the “Glossy Posse”—noted, “Her parents have a tarmac drive, for God’s sake.” (In England, tarmac drives are held to be a sign of new wealth; old money generally has either gravel or long roads, with tire-flattening potholes.) There are those in the Glossy Posse who question whether Middleton’s poise is natural. One likened her and her younger sister, Pippa, 25, to the Bouvier sisters, with their obvious desire to “marry well.” An acquaintance felt that Kate was extremely controlled and controlling. Some have commented on the small number of close friends she and Prince William have—between a dozen and 20—and note that they are nearly all his, from either Eton or college, or family friends from his teenage years, such as popular London club promoter Guy Pelly, 26, Thomas van Straubenzee, 26, and Hugh Van Cutsem, 34. There are also those who believe Middleton is enigmatic at best, boring at worst. “What are her interests?” asks a newspaper editor.

“All she seems to do is go to the gym and go to either Boujis or Mahiki [the current favorite nightclubs for wealthy twentysomethings in London]. She doesn’t have a job. She doesn’t go to the theater. We don’t really have any idea of who she really is, and what we do see is rather shallow.” In May it was reported that Kate had asked people to call her “Catherine.” The press was quick to point out the obvious: “Catherine” is a far more regal name than “Kate.” All these reports were strenuously denied by Paddy Harverson, Prince Charles’s press secretary. Nonetheless, Sunday Express columnist Adam Helliker, who broke the “Catherine” story, told me he had heard about—but had not seen—a “gentle” e-mail sent by Kate to her friends, saying she was reverting to the name she had had until she was in her mid-teens. Helliker said, “It was just a very jokey thing.” He stood by his story. Another report claimed that the Queen wanted Middleton to get a full-time job. In fact, she was quietly working, as her lawyer Gerrard Tyrrell confirms.

She has been getting up each morning in Bucklebury, driving to the Party Pieces office in Reading, and, according to Hello! magazine, putting together the catalogues for her parents’ company. Adam Helliker says he heard she was taking a technology course to learn how to make digital catalogues, which Tyrrell confirms is correct. Under the circumstances, it was probably about the only job Middleton felt safe doing—and she saw no need to tell the British media about it. “She’s been offered every job under the sun,” a Middleton family friend tells me. “Russian oligarchs, fashion designers—everyone wants her. But if she goes out and works, she’ll be accused of abusing her connections—or of being used.… What can she do? She’s in a very difficult position.” All the royal press—and former courtiers I spoke to—agreed that until Prince William formalizes their relationship Middleton is in an awkward spot. She is not officially entitled to any royal benefits paid for by the taxpayers, such as security; she has no spokesperson and is not receiving any official guidance on what to wear or how to conduct herself in royal circles. Yet the reality is she has become a celebrity.

Her main lifeline is Tyrrell, who also represents British model Kate Moss and Roman Abramovich , owner of the Chelsea soccer team. Should Middleton feel harassed, as she was on her 25th birthday, or crowded out on the ski slopes in Klosters, Switzerland, as she was earlier this year, she calls Tyrrell, who sorts it out, providing a backup security detail or sending letters to newspaper editors. One of Prince Charles’s former aides says that he is a very “laissez-faire father” to his two sons. “He likes Kate a lot, but she won’t be getting any ‘training’ or guidance as to how to behave,” says this person. Middleton with William shortly before their brief breakup in 2007. By Stephen Lock/from Rex USA. Catherine Elizabeth Middleton is the eldest of three children, sister to Pippa, a party organizer, and James, 21, who also works for Party Pieces. The Middleton parents are unpretentious people, according to a family friend. Michael Middleton grew up in Leeds, and his father was a pilot.

Carole Middleton grew up initially in Southall, London; her father, Ron Goldsmith, was a builder, and her mother, Dorothy, was a store clerk. Michael and Carole met while working for the former British airline BOAC. Carole was a stewardess, Michael a steward, who would later train to become a pilot. When the couple had James, in 1987, Carole came up with the idea of starting a mail-order business that would sell partyware—paper hats, glitter, themed costumes, etc. The success of Party Pieces would allow the Middletons to purchase the five-bedroom house in Bucklebury and make them millionaires. It is a close-knit family. They frequently go on vacation to the Caribbean island of Mustique, where observers see them out late laughing, clearly having a good time. Significantly, no one in the village of Bucklebury has ever gossiped to the press about them—which, according to Adam Helliker, shows how “squeaky clean” they are. When William comes to visit, the Middletons stop in at the Yew Tree pub. None of the locals ever bother them.

When Kate was 11, her parents sent her to an all-girls school, Downe House, in Berkshire, where she was bullied. They moved her to the co-ed school Marlborough, in Wiltshire—alma mater of the Duke and Duchess of York’s daughter Princess Eugenie. There, as “Kate,” Middleton grew into a sporty sort, excelling at tennis, hockey, and netball. The only incident anyone can recall where her behavior was anything other than exemplary was when she “mooned” passersby from her dormitory window. Like many well-off students, she took what the British call a “gap year” between secondary school and college, spending three months of it in Florence learning Italian at the British Institute. While there, friends noticed that, though they frequently overindulged, Kate often nursed a single drink throughout the evening. In September 2001, she headed off to St. Andrews University, famous for the “niceness” of its student body. Diana’s tragic death, in 1997, left her elder son wary and less certain of things.

The two had not been on great terms when Diana died, says American education consultant Tamara Rosenberg, who has known the Prince since his early teens when he was at Eton. “William was starting to chafe at being Mama’s boy.… He was trying to be more independent. And then she died. He never really resolved that.” His relationship with his father was solid but distant. A former courtier says that, though the Princes put up with Camilla, they have never forgotten that she was their mother’s bête noire for 15 years.William talks about his father and mentions Camilla, says Rosenberg, but “he never talks about his mother.” In 2000, after graduating from Eton, William spent some of his gap year working in Latin America with the British charity group Raleigh International. Then he went to Kenya, where, it was rumored, he grew close to the beautiful Jessica (Jecca) Craig, 26, daughter of Ian and Jane Craig, who run the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. Upon his return to England, William began dating Arabella Musgrave, the pretty, brunette 21-year-old daughter of Major Nicholas Musgrave, manager of Cirencester Park Polo Club.

She and William secretly started dating, spending many weekends at Highgrove, his father’s house in Gloucestershire. It was with considerable trepidation that William set off in September 2001 for St. Andrews. It was really the first time he was leaving the insulated bubble of friends and family. Tamara Rosenberg says, “Even though there were at least a dozen Etonians there who he knew, I think that was the first time he was out of the environment where he was around people he’d known all his life.” He arrived at St. Andrews a week later than most to avoid what is known as “Freshers’ Week,” when new undergraduates generally drink too much. Presumably, he didn’t want pictures of himself intoxicated appearing in the British papers. Instead, the press was allowed to photograph his arrival with his father. But then, by prior agreement, the press left—except, ironically, for a video crew belonging to Ardent, his uncle Prince Edward’s television company. When they were found loitering, filming inside the city walls, the university’s rector, Andrew Neil, who is now the chairman of the Press Holdings Media Group, recalls, Prince Charles got on the phone to his younger brother.

“Charles read Edward the riot act.… He was furious,” says Neil. Initially, William, who was officially listed as William Wales from Tetbury, Gloucestershire, chose to live in a public-housing unit, the equivalent of a co-ed dorm, known as St. Salvator’s. Kate Middleton had moved in there, as well. The pair soon became friends; not only were they in the same dorm, they were both majoring in art history. Unlike some of the young women in his classes, who may have signed up just to meet him, Kate had a dashing, sporty boyfriend in tow—Rupert Finch, who was from Norfolk, East Anglia. After his first term, William was so unhappy he was thinking of quitting. He wasn’t enjoying his art-history classes, and he reportedly missed Arabella Musgrave. According to Katie Nicholl, a columnist for the Mail on Sunday, who has broken many stories about Middleton, Kate was hugely instrumental in persuading him to stay; like his father and many others, she must have been well aware that quitting school would be disastrous in terms of his public image.

Why not try a course he was more interested in, like geography, she suggested, which proved a far better fit for him. After the end of his first year, William had grown so trusting of Kate that together with Fergus Boyd, an old friend from Eton, and another friend, they forsook public housing and rented a house several miles outside the center of St. Andrews. In some ways William liked being anonymous; in other ways, not. “When he was in school he would just … go round doing grocery shopping like a normal guy or just hang out with friends … but at the same time he would also be going on holidays … and driving whatever car he wanted and then be able to pick whatever town house he wanted in an area near all his classes,” says Tamara Rosenberg, who saw him there during this period. By now Kate’s relationship with Rupert Finch was faltering, and William had ended his relationship with Arabella Musgrave. Toward the end of his first year, he briefly dated a St. Andrews student, Carly Massy-Birch, now an actress. No one knows exactly when William and Kate became more than just housemates, but everyone at St.

Andrews noticed his excitement in April 2002, during a charity fashion show at the university, when Kate paraded down a runway in diaphanous clothing with black underwear visible underneath. At first their relationship was known only to a very tight group of friends who never talked about it at the time and have kept their silence since. “It’s a kind of unwritten policy,” says Jules Knight, a musician, who was at St. Andrews with the couple and is still a friend. “We were very protective up there … and the idea was that that would carry on. Everyone sticks by that code of loyalty.” Each attended the other’s 21st-birthday party, but both appearances were sufficiently inconspicuous that the British media paid no heed. In fact, it was Jecca Craig who drew their attention, since she was the guest of honor at Prince William’s celebration at Windsor Castle on June 21, 2003. The first the British media had an inkling that the Prince had a serious girlfriend was when he and Middleton were spotted skiing in Klosters in March 2004.

On the same trip the following year, William, uncharacteristically, let his guard down when he encountered journalist Duncan Larcombe at a nightclub and told him he didn’t think he’d get married until he was at least 28 or 30. No one among the royal press was particularly surprised by this statement. “He’s trying to have it both ways,” says Richard Kay. “He saw what happened to his mother and also what happened to his father. His father made a catastrophic mistake in letting the woman he loved [Camilla] slip through his fingers 30 years ago and was miserable for years.… But on the other hand his mother married far too young, and he has not wanted to make the same mistake.” Later that year, worried by exams and feeling claustrophobic, William and Kate did have a break of sorts, and William went on a sailing holiday around the Greek islands—most of his shipmates, reportedly, were women. But within a few months they were back together again, preparing for their final year at St. Andrews. The two knuckled down, isolated from media scrutiny.

In April 2005, Kate did not go with William to the wedding of his father to Camilla Parker Bowles—perhaps because her appearance there would have been a distraction from the main event. But in July 2005, right after they graduated, William took Kate on vacation to Lewa Downs, the Craigs’ home in Kenya—and, inevitably, Kate must have seen the gesture as significant: he wanted her to be friends with Jecca, his dear friend. In January 2006, William followed his younger brother to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, in Surrey, for a year of army training; this would be followed by five months spent doing Special to Arm training at Bovington in Dorset, and then he would join the Household Cavalry regiment in Windsor. During his time there he undertook attachments for four months with the Royal Air Force and then two in the Royal Navy during 2008—essential experience for his future job as “head of the armed forces”—though inevitably his training in each branch would be far less arduous than that required of ordinary soldiers, airmen, and sailors.

He knew there was no chance, as future King, he would get to see actual combat, unlike Harry, who would serve in secret in Afghanistan for three months earlier this year. It was announced in September that William would be postponing a life full of charity work to begin an 18-month training course in January with the Royal Air Force’s Search and Rescue Force (sarf). Kate, on the other hand, was less sure of what the future held. She was interested in fashion and photography, but as the Prince’s girlfriend, she needed to accommodate his schedule. Once he went to Sandhurst the couple would meet either at Highgrove or at the Middletons’ house in Bucklebury. Middleton’s parents also bought an apartment in London’s Chelsea neighborhood. Whenever the Prince was in London, this became the place where, as Katie Nicholl puts it, “he could have a bath, dinner, put his head on her lap, and just relax.” However, while her prince was away, life in London during the week was lonely and stressful for Kate, who began to be followed by paparazzi on shopping excursions and photographed on nights out.

Sometime in 2006 she sought the help of Gerrard Tyrrell, who told me that she has a hotline to him, should she require it. Yet, unlike Diana, Kate has almost never seemed to be rattled by the cameras. In fact, to the contrary, many British commentators have rather waspishly commented on how fresh she always appears—particularly in the early hours of the morning, when her companions, including Prince William, look obviously intoxicated as they leave their favorite nightclubs. It has been suggested that Middleton’s wholesome appearance after a night on the dance floor is the result of drinking cautiously and carefully touching up in the ladies’ bathroom before facing the cameras. “Has she ever heard of leaving via a back door?” one member of the Glossy Posse sniped. In November 2006, Kate got a part-time job as a fashion-accessories buyer for Jigsaw, a chain-store company owned by John and Belle Robinson. In July, Belle gave an interview about Middleton, painting her as a down-to-earth sort, even though Kate had asked for a job with “an element of flexibility to continue the relationship with a very high-profile man and a life she can’t dictate,” according to Robinson.

Yet, the older woman liked her part-time employee. “She sat in the kitchen at lunchtime and chatted with everyone from the van drivers to the accounts girls,” Robinson told the London Evening Standard. “She wasn’t precious. A lot of people have distorted it to say we’re friends with her parents, but I’ve only met them four times. “I have to say I was so impressed by her. There were days when there were TV crews at the end of the drive. We’d say, ‘Listen, do you want to go out the back way?’ And she’d say, ‘To be honest, they’re going to hound us until they’ve got the picture. So why don’t I just go, get the picture done, and then they’ll leave us alone.’ ” Throughout 2006, Kate and William were photographed mostly on vacation, leaving nightclubs, or on the polo field. These images increasingly began to leave a somewhat negative impression—the British media referred to the young Princes as “boys” or, even worse, as “playboys.” “It doesn’t play well,” says Richard Kay.

“They are being mocked in lots of circles as just a pair of prize Sloanes [Sloane Rangers] spending vast amounts of money on disgusting cocktails. They spend an awful lot of time in nightclubs for people who are supposed to have jobs in the army.” Interestingly, of the tight-knit royal clique who hit the clubs with increasing regularity, perhaps the most aware of the bad impression they were creating was Middleton. On vacation in 2006, Prince William and Guy Pelly, an old friend in the group, often referred to as the “court jester,” were careening around on mopeds in front of a rented house on Ibiza. According to a source, Middleton came out of the house and, matron-like, told them to stop. “She said, Anyone could be watching.… Go out the back and stop behaving like this.” Like chastened schoolboys, the two did what they were told. William may not have liked it, but Middleton’s judgment was almost certainly right. Kate’s confidence in her role as the royal girlfriend steadily grew. “She is very self-assured—Kate has always been buoyed by her mother’s confidence in her,” says Nicholl.

Certainly only a young woman with great poise would retort to a friend who commented on her luck in dating Prince William that “he’s lucky to be going out with me!” She went to dinner several times with the Queen, who liked her, as did Charles and Camilla. Harry, according to one friend, took longer to warm up to her. Kate, with her demure outfits (fitted jackets over a dress, drop pearl earrings) and self-control, was the complete antithesis of Harry’s blonde Zimbabwean girlfriend, the wealthy Chelsy Davy, who dresses in a far more provocative style. Chelsy is not afraid to be photographed with a glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other. “She looks sort of like an unmade bed,” says Richard Kay with a chuckle. “The passion attraction between the two of them [Chelsy and Harry] fizzles and crackles. You can see they just want to rip their clothes off.” Lately, however, Harry and Kate are said to have become closer. Meanwhile, William and Kate have refined their post-college set of friends.

The new group contains Jamie Murray Wells, for example, a bright entrepreneur who started his own business, Glasses Direct—but in the main it consists of William’s old friends from St. Andrews and from the polo-world and millionaire sets: Arabella Musgrave, head of public relations for Prada, and her boyfriend, brewery heir James Tollemache; Holly Branson, the doctor daughter of entrepreneur Sir Richard; Jecca Craig; Alice Warrender; Guy Pelly; Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs; amateur boxer James Meade; Henry Ropner; Emilia D’Erlanger; Olivia Hunt; the Honorable Virginia Fraser; Lady Mary and Lady Iona Douglas-Home, the granddaughters of 1963–64 prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home; and Henry Conway, a promoter of Mahiki. This group knows the rules: no gossiping about the couple and absolutely no talking to the press. According to Katie Nicholl, William has even been known to test people before allowing them into his group. He has good reason to be careful. In September 2007, Guy Pelly was flown to Las Vegas in a setup by a tabloid, according to Katie Nicholl.

He was plied with alcohol and lap dances. He thought he was discussing expanding his club empire, but he soon noticed a recording device sticking out of one of his companion’s bags and terminated the meeting. His loyalty has been rewarded. Both Prince Harry and Prince William are often to be found at the nightclubs for which Pelly is director of marketing—the Polynesian-themed Mahiki, in Mayfair, and now Whisky Mist, in Park Lane. But Middleton is ever watchful that a bad impression be avoided. Two years ago Nicholl was dining at Automat, a restaurant in Mayfair, when she saw Middleton enter and do a sweep of the restaurant to ensure that the booth she had reserved was basically hidden and that William would be able to have his back to the other diners. “When she had the seating all worked out, William came in with Arabella Musgrave and James Tollemache,” recalls Nicholl. “I just thought, Gosh … I don’t think I’ve ever met another 24-year-old who would have done such a thing.” In December 2006, William graduated from Sandhurst.

To the media’s astonishment—and delight—Kate and her parents were invited to the ceremony, along with the Queen, Prince Charles, and Camilla. Kate wore a scarlet coat over a black camisole with a big black quasi top hat. The Middletons arrived using the same route as the Queen—slipping into the front row just before the ceremony. That Christmas, the Middleton family rented a house in Perthshire, Scotland. William would be at Balmoral, also in Scotland, but hundreds of miles away, for New Year’s. In March, just around the time William started army training in Dorset, the couple attended the Cheltenham Gold Cup races in traditional tweed suits. The press covered their attendance ironically, noting how much like Charles and Camilla—nicknamed “Fred and Gladys”—the pair looked in their old-fashioned clothes. William was said not to be amused. A few days later Kate, looking far more youthful and modern in a warm coat and Russian-style fur hat, went to the races on her own.

Lord Vestey, a friend of Prince Charles’s, was hosting a lunch for Charles, Camilla, Camilla’s children, Tom and Laura, as well as Zac Goldsmith and Camilla’s nephew Ben Elliot, among others. When the royal party heard Kate was there, she was invited to join them in the royal box. There was speculation, however, that William did not like just how comfortable Kate had become in the royal-family fold. He felt claustrophobic. On April 14, 2007, it was leaked to the Sun that the young couple had split. There were rumors that William had been enjoying nights on the dance floor both in London and in Bournemouth, near his army barracks, with pretty blondes. Officially, the Palace said that the decision to split was mutual and amicable. But within hours the story changed. Suddenly, there were reports that courtiers and other unnamed friends of William’s had swayed him with snobbish views about Middleton’s background, in particular her mother’s early career as a stewardess. The Queen, it was reported, had frowned on Carole Middleton’s middle-class manner of speaking.

For example, she reportedly says “pardon” instead of “what” and “toilet” instead of “loo.” No sooner had the media reported the story than the inevitable backlash started, fueled when Prince William’s spokesperson, Paddy Harverson, told those who bothered to ask that the reports about snobbery were just not true. For one thing the Queen had never met Mrs. Middleton, even though they had been at the same event. It was very hard not to empathize with Kate and her family as the weeks of commentary about their role in a possible class war escalated—until, that is, Kate seemed to take matters into her own hands and turned all the press attention to her advantage. Quite suddenly in May, looking thinner and dressing younger, she was photographed frequently going out, mostly with her sister, Pippa, a dark-haired beauty who had just split up with banking heir J. J. Jardine Paterson. I saw the Middleton sisters in May 2007 as they entered the Mayfair jewelers Asprey one evening to celebrate the launch of Young Stalin, a book by historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. As they came into the room, the atmosphere turned electric.

Photographers went berserk, clicking madly. Both young women looked stunning, but Kate particularly so in an ivory sheath that set off her tanned, glowing skin and streamlined figure. Suddenly the sisters were everywhere. William, back in his army barracks in Bovington, could not have helped but see the images of his ex-girlfriend looking like a movie star, in slinky halter-neck dresses. “Unsurprisingly,” says Richard Kay, “he wanted her back.” After all, whom else did he know as well? Whom else could he trust? Who else wanted to take on the role of royal consort? View more images of Kate Middleton. Also: video . Above, Middleton at the 2006 wedding of Laura Parker Bowles and Harry Lopes. By Ian Jones/© Telegraph UK/Zuma Press. He talked to friends such as Tamara Rosenberg during this time and basically expressed his confusion. On the one hand he loved Kate and wanted it to work. But he wanted to be sure he’d explored all his options.

As he told a source, “I think it’s a good idea to ‘sow my wild oats.’ ” What he discovered was that the other women he was interested in were occupied or not interested in him. “I don’t think he found it that easy to get a replacement,” says Kay. Katie Nicholl believes Middleton played her hand brilliantly. “She knew that by giving him time and space she could probably get him back, and she did so by being very clever, stepping out at his favorite clubs, looking glamorous and fabulous, and making him realize … that’s the only thing.” In fact, the split lasted only a few weeks. In June 2007, William invited her to a “Freakin’ Naughty”–themed party at his army barracks. Kate wore a nurse’s uniform. “He could not take his eyes off her all night,” a source told Nicholl. The relationship was secretly back on from there, but became public only in July, when Harry and William hosted a gala at Wembley to mark the 10 years since their mother’s death. While Harry sat next to Chelsy Davy, Middleton was placed more discreetly a few rows back, but the cameras picked her up immediately.

‘He could of course dump her and get away with it, but it’s unlikely,” said Nicholl over tea in a London hotel not long ago. “He would look like a real cad now. It’s gone so far.” And, indeed, in the past year the couple have increasingly looked as if they are readying themselves for an engagement. In November, Middleton apologized to Belle Robinson and said she needed to leave her job at Jigsaw. She needed some space. The couple has sneaked away on vacations when they could. Prince Charles has been photographed teaching her how to shoot—unlike the late Princess of Wales, Middleton seems to enjoy outdoor life. She was seated prominently when William graduated in April 2008 from R.A.F. Cranwell, just as she would be at the Garter ceremony in June—and at the weddings of Peter Phillips and, later, Lady Rose Windsor. Her fashion sense has changed: she took the advice of fashion consultant Leesa Whisker and is often seen in the label Issa; the clothes are more sophisticated than the High Street chain-store outfits she used to wear, but not as expensive as couture labels. Increasingly she is looking more effortlessly regal. In September Clarence House reorganized P.R.

staffing so that Prince William and Prince Harry would have their own press secretary, Miguel Head. Perhaps this signifies more than just a change in the bureaucracy. Unlike Charles, Camilla, or indeed Diana, William and Kate do not yet have “conduits” in the British media to convey messages when they want to. “If they did,” says Richard Kay, “then there wouldn’t have been so much rubbish written.” Patrick Jephson, Diana’s former equerry and spokesperson, hopes Kate is a sign that, with William, the British monarchy will return to the days of authenticity. Jephson points out that both the Queen and, before her, the late Queen Mother—who, like Middleton, was not born a royal—always put royal duty before anything else. “Will Kate Middleton be like Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon?” he asks. Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who became the Queen Mother, always had the love of the British people, particularly for her exemplary bravery when she stayed in London, against advice to move somewhere safer, during the World War II Blitz. Jephson’s question is hypothetical, and no one yet knows the answer. But the signs are that the young woman from Berkshire may well be up to the task.

Vicky Ward is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. Share

Question: For which high street clothing chain did Kate Middleton work as an accessory buyer in 2006?
Answer: Jigsaw