My local street is full of mums dressed like their kids!

Charlotte Cripps, The Independent

Last week at the Trooping the Colour, the Princess of Wales opted for a “mummy-and-me” look with her nine-year-old daughter, Princess Charlotte. Kate Middleton wore a striking aquamarine Catherine Walker coat dress with a matching fascinator, while Charlotte was dressed in a similarly hued outfit, in a move that has been heralded as “a masterclass in mother-daughter style”. It’s not a new phenomenon. Princess Diana pulled off a similar trick for the same event in 1988, sporting a smart pea-green dress on the balcony of Buckingham Palace while carrying a young Prince Harry dressed in matching shorts. But the Waleses have arguably fine-tuned the technique, frequently appearing en masse in coordinated outfits. Kate and Charlotte wore similar sailor-style dresses at Trooping the Colour in 2024 and matching black coat dresses with deep pleats and wide-brimmed hats at Queen Elizabeth II's funeral in 2022. Kate paired a forest green fascinator with Charlotte’s little green coat while attending church at Sandringham on Christmas Day in 2019. And they also donned matching mother and daughter silver and crystal headpieces for King Charles III’s Coronation in 2023.

“Kate dresses her family like this as a way of marking it apart from the rest of the royal family and also to provide a big show of unity and togetherness, because the strength of the monarchy lies in the Waleses brand, especially at the moment,” says Charlotte Griffiths, royal commentator and editor at large of The Mail on Sunday. “After all, William is going to be King in the not-too-distant future.” The Waleses are “pictorially aware” these days, she adds, and matching outfits make for a great photo opportunity that can add a level of “mystique”. Furthermore, she says, it’s important to Kate that Charlotte is a “chip off the old block”. “The narrative is that Charlotte is just like the late Queen — and looking very formal and traditional with perfect hair plays into this. Louis is the ‘joker’, so he can have his skew-whiff tie. They get George to look as much as possible like William. It’s all about lineage and protecting the future.” And where the royals tread, mere mortals tend to follow. Matching outfits, particularly between mothers and daughters, have become a popular trend among celebrities and their children. Beyonce and Blue Ivy often coordinate their outfits, wearing matching Gucci dresses with a blue rose and bee floral print by the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 2016, and more recently spotted in orange and blue football sequinned jerseys in behind-the-scenes footage from Beyonce’s world tour in 2023. Kim Kardashian and her daughter North wore a matching sequinned metallic dress to attend Kanye West's gig at Madison Square Garden in 2016, and Kim twinned with her younger daughter, Chicago, in off-white and light blue dresses for Christmas Eve in 2023.

Naturally enough, Joe Public has also got in on the act. I recently saw a mum wearing a bohemian maxi dress with her toddler perched in her Bugaboo pram wearing a classic smock dress in identical print, strolling down Westbourne Grove. At a party for one of my daughter’s classmates, the mum coordinated her all-in-white look with the birthday girl. Another mum in the local playground wore pink and white striped pyjama-style trousers, while her daughter wore a dress in the same colours. Unsurprisingly, the high street has been quick to catch on. Stores like Trotters, Boden, La Coqueta and Needles & Thread, which has concessions at Harrods and Selfridges, actively cater for this upmarket trend, with rails of expensive pretty florals and dreamy ruffles that offer a “royal” or bohemian look with plenty of mummy-and-me scope.

La Coqueta, a popular Spanish children’s brand, is a favourite among yummy mummies in Notting Hill, and this year has teamed up with Hill House Home to create a 14-piece capsule “Mama & Mini” collection that includes the Rita and Matilda dresses in their exclusive green bird floral print. More affordable, but still unmistakably middle-class, is Boden, which offers identical mother-child items.