Princess Anne does it and the backstabbers' knives are out.

Anne turned out in a pretty floral wrap-around dress with matching fascinator for the wedding of the daughter of the Duke of Gloucester last week.

Looked lovely, she did.

But Royal watchers recognised the outfit immediately... It was the exact one she wore to another Royal wedding 27 years earlier.... That of Charles and Diana.

Tut tut, they said; was that appropriate?

Well why the hell not? It wasn't Anne's frilly little frock that put the mockers on that marriage. And why does everything connected to Diana now have the hallowed status of a religious relic?

Vintage is searingly hot right now. But because Anne chooses to get it from her own wardrobe, she's being accused of being a cheapskate. Yet why would a woman who must have as many designer clothes as... oh, I don't know, the Queen's daughter, pay good money for a top stylist to go trawling through those swish London secondhand boutiques in search of tattier versions of what she's already got?

The fact that the Princess Royal is your no-nonsense, practical type who thinks it makes total sense to dig something almost 30 years old out of her wardrobe for an important date says that this is a confident woman who doesn't give a fig what others think.

And who wouldn't be when they know that their figure is still as perfectly trim as it was three decades ago?

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