Imagine you’re Prince William. What bag do you take for a weekend shouting at builders at your new country house? A battered Mulberry canvas and leather tote? A classically understated grip from Connolly? No. What he was actually pictured arriving with at King’s Cross (only a fool tries to drive back to London from north Norfolk on a Sunday night. With luck and a following wind, you might arrive in time to go to work on Monday morning but it’s probably safer to assume it’ll be Tuesday). Anyway, while Kate was toting a reassuringly expensive-looking bag (the £245 Odyssey from Sandstorm Kenya, a company that started out making safari tents) what Prince William was carrying was a nylon duffle bag from Cotton Traders (we can only find similar ones on eBay). This is, to say the least, unexpected.
For those unfamiliar with Cotton Traders, they supply reasonably-priced leisurewear to the [very] middle-aged masses. If you are 45-plus and in the market for a stripy polo shirt, or a blackberry-coloured fleece, you could do a lot worse, and pay a lot more, elsewhere. You couldn’t design a website less likely to scare the horses, and they support Help for Heroes, too. By happy chance, they have a store in King’s Lynn, from where the Cambridges were catching their train. Perhaps their famously frugal eyes were caught by his’n’hers fleeces for £17 each.
But what do normal 32-year-old men in Norfolk wear? How does Wills compare? I asked my Turnip Toff on the ground — as Norfolk’s high society has been christened — to enlighten me.
“Prince William is a classic example of someone who looks like they’ve been beamed into Norfolk from Fulham,” she says. “Most men of his age and class — and don���t underestimate how many seriously posh people there are in Norfolk — would carry something very old and very battered, without any visible logo. They were probably given it by their godmother for their 21st birthday. Any branding is considered bad form, fleeces are only to be worn when skiing in Verbier, and they wouldn’t have a clue what Cotton Traders is. What they care more about is the brand of your tractor.”
So there we are. Maybe it was a strategy and he was trying to blend in with the masses on public transport. Maybe his battered old tote broke suddenly as he was approaching the station (does this happen to the Royals?). Personally, I blame the godparents.