Princess Charlene of Monaco has been crowned as the royal figure with the most expensive wardrobe, a fashion website has calculated.
The retail value of the new clothes she wore in public last year came to at least €739,541.52, according to the royal fashion blog UFO No More.
No other princess came close. Princess Maria-Olympia of Greece’s non-reigning royal family was second, with outfits estimated to be worth €227,604.42.
The Princess of Wales was third with €217,310.46, which looked thrifty by comparison with Charlene, 44.
UFO No More said it had been able to estimate the value of 168 of the 204 pieces of new clothing worn by Kate last year, with an average value of €1,293.51.
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Charlene, who married Monaco’s ruler Prince Albert, 64, in 2011, wore 105 new garments and the fashion experts were able to price 65 of the outfits, with an average value of €11,357.56.
One of her dresses was what Hello magazine described as a Cinderella-blue Prada gown that she wore for the Red Cross Gala Ball in Monaco this summer, along with Versace sandals.
UFO No More — a blog devoted to naming “unidentified fashion objects” — studied the outfits of 19 royal women. Some garments could not be identified and the value of others was impossible to determine, especially if the pieces were custom-made. However, French-language media outlets said there was no doubt of Charlene’s dominance in royal fashion.
In some countries, such extravagance might raise eyebrows at a time of economic difficulty but in Monaco, which has more Ferraris per capita than anywhere else, it is unlikely.
Indeed, it may even boost Charlene’s standing in the Mediterranean principality, where she caused disquiet in 2021 by her prolonged stay in South Africa, the country where she grew up and which she represented as an Olympic swimmer. After returning to Monaco she kept a low profile while undergoing treatment for reported health problems but has resumed public duties in recent months.
