Princess Anne’s Cutout Dress Is One of Her Most Daring Looks to Date

• Princess Anne wore one of her most daring, fashion-forward looks yet to a dinner held at Windsor Castle.

• At the event, which celebrated the Commonwealth, the Princess Royal wore a cobalt blue dress with bold teardrop-shaped cutouts on her neckline and both arms.

• Anne isn’t the first royal to wear an outfit with cutouts, although it’s not a totally common staple in royal fashion.

When it comes to Princess Anne and her fashion, you can’t say the woman isn’t versatile. Let’s take a brief snapshot of her month of May so far, shall we? The month is only half over, and the Princess Royal has already been seen in military uniform not just once but twice, in formalwear—hats included—for a Buckingham Palace garden party and also a Service of Thanksgiving, and a chic cream coat paired with brown gloves for one of Anne’s many royal engagements.

When you’re the year-to-year hardest working royal, there’s plenty of opportunities to debut new outfits. But on May 14, a photo emerged of the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip wearing one of her most daring looks yet—a cobalt blue dress with numerous cutouts along the neckline and arms that added a bold element to Anne’s normally safe ensembles.

As Hello! puts it, Anne rarely deviates “from her tried and tested trademark looks,” typically wearing “smart, fitted skirt suits for royal engagements, occasionally dabbling in smart cigarette trousers and tailored jackets.” But she certainly did step out of her tried and true in the photo released Wednesday, which showed Anne at an event at Windsor Castle last month “wearing an outfit unlike any she’s worn before,” the outlet wrote.

The occasion? A dinner at the castle that celebrated global leadership, trust, and collaboration across Commonwealth Nations. Typical royal fare, right? Well, yes, until a photo emerged on social media showing Anne in a bold blue dress with teardrop-shaped cutouts along her neckline—which revealed the Princess Royal’s collarbones—and the gown’s long sleeves adorned top to bottom with the same cutouts.

While this may be a departure from Anne’s M.O., cutouts aren’t new to royal fashion. Although Kate Middleton “has never been seen in such a design,” according to Hello!, Meghan Markle wore an ensemble with a prominent cutout to a polo event with husband Prince Harry last year.

Eagle-eyed royal fashion followers examining Anne’s blue gown at Windsor Castle also noticed something else that was different about the 74-year-old’s look—she wasn’t wearing gloves, as she typically always does to royal engagements. In a fashion move following in the footsteps of her mother, the late Queen Elizabeth, it’s rare for Anne to attend a public engagement without gloves, “which are believed to be a hygiene measure rather than a fashion statement,” Hello! reported. After all, Anne is often shaking hundreds of hands at engagements—so it makes sense from that standpoint (and, hey, from a fashion standpoint too).

Anne seems to have fully hit her stride nearly one year after an incident involving a horse at her home, Gatcombe Park, left her hospitalized with a concussion last June. At her first public engagement after her injury on July 12, Anne said, per The Daily Mail, “I can’t remember a single thing about it.”

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