Royal Outfits of the Day: Day Formal with Mary and Letizia

The year's first fancy events rolled on last week in Denmark and over the weekend in Spain. These all involve what I call a modern sort of court dress for the royal women: formal outfits with long skirts for day events. It's something that used to be more common in the royal world, but is now limited to a few events in a few countries.

In Denmark, Queen Margrethe and the crown princely couple hold two days of New Year's Court receptions. They greet specific groups at each event.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Crown Princess Mary Fan Page (@crownprincess_mary_of_denmark) on Jan 4, 2019 at 7:52pm PST

Crown Princess Mary is fond of repeats for these events and many of those repeats have been redone over the years. This year featured a pair of remixed repeats.

Embed from Getty Images

First up was an old Heartmade outfit that's had many appearances at the New Year's Courts over the years. In 2017, she ditched the original jacket and had a new top put on the outfit. I'm still hoping we'll see that jacket again. (Queen Margrethe, by the way, is tremendously fond of repeats for these events; she wears this blue outfit for both days and has done so for many years.)

Kongehuset

On the second day, Mary wore the dress she wore to attend the evening New Year banquet back in 2006, which was her first time attending. The Henrik Hviid dress turned up again in 2012 with its long train chopped off to serve as an option for the day events. Not my favorite, but she did give us some of the Danish Ruby Parure we were missing at this year's gala, with the brooch at her neck and the stud earrings.

In Spain, the King and Queen attended Pascua Militar, a military ceremony and their first formal event of the new year.

Embed from Getty Images

Even I - with my well-documented love of a winter velvet outfit - must admit that this Felipe Varela version is a bit of a snooze. Okay, it's a total snooze, unless you choose to look at it as nothing but a backdrop for some brooch action.

House of HM the King

That's a brooch, alright. This one is from the joyas de pasar, the Spanish royal jewels passed from queen to queen, and it is a debut for the Queen. (She wore a different pearl brooch with a pendant for National Day in 2017. Both are a common style found in multiple royal collections, including the Cambridge Pearl Pendant Brooch in Britain.)

Embed from Getty Images

It's interesting that when she adds a brooch - a jewel some might consider old fashioned today - she goes with outfits that feel like classic royal standards. That National Day outfit I linked above gave me strong flashbacks to a young Queen Elizabeth II; now we've got a brooch on a bouclé jacket, which is about as classic as it comes. I'd be interested to see her to put more of a modern Letizia spin on it, if ya know what I mean?