Meghan Markle Dealt Fashion Blow Over Princess Kate Designer

Princess Kate’s favorite designer, Sarah Burton, has been handed the creative keys to Givenchy, the fashion house so loved by Meghan Markle that she tasked it with making her wedding dress in 2018.

This could come as a potential blow to the style-minded duchess, according to a new episode of Newsweek’s The Royal Report podcast. Burton was announced as the new creative director of the French fashion house in a statement from the brand on September 9.

“Givenchy announces the appointment of Sarah Burton as Creative Director, with immediate effect,” the statement read. “Sarah will be responsible for the creative direction of all of the Maison’s Women’s and Men’s collections. Her first collection will be presented in March 2025.”

Burton left her former role at the house of Alexander McQueen in 2023, where she had worked for over two decades and had made some of Kate’s most famous dresses, including those worn for her wedding in 2011 and the coronation of King Charles III in 2023. Givenchy, the brand adored by Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy, was founded in 1952 and has been headed by a succession of British creative directors since the retirement of its founder, Hubert de Givenchy, in 1995.

In 2018, Meghan Markle selected one of these, Clare Waight Keller, who had joined the house a year earlier, to design the most important dress of her public life: her royal wedding dress. From the wedding day, Givenchy became synonymous with the new Duchess of Sussex. The newest British royal wore Waight Keller designs for the house to high-profile events, including Royal Ascot and the British Fashion Awards, where she presented the designer with a special accolade in recognition of her work.

Now, though, with Waight Keller having left the house in 2020 and pursuing private collaborations with the likes of affordable casual wear brand Uniqlo and sister-in-law Kate’s favorite designer being installed in its Paris atelier, Newsweek’s chief royal correspondent, Jack Royston, told Royal Report listeners that Meghan may be unlikely to return.