Kate Middleton's tartan skirt in Belfast nods to a 400-year-old Ulster history

Catherine, Princess of Wales, touched down in Belfast on a drizzly Thursday morning in a longline woolen coat over a pussy-bow blouse, tucked into an Emilia Wickstead tartan skirt that skimmed her Gianvito Rossi pumps. On the surface it was a classic fall look. As Vogue's Daniel Rodgers notes, it was also another lesson in diplomatic dressing.

Her wardrobe has form. There was the blush-pink Dior Bar jacket worn to greet Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte at the start of their 2025 state visit, a sky-blue sweater in support of Ukraine in 2022, and a maple-leaf brooch on her 2011 tour of Canada. In Belfast, the message could be found in the fabric itself.

The clue is the tartan. Most people file the pattern under Scotland, but it has a history in the north of Ireland stretching back centuries. In 1956, tartan trews were pulled from peaty soil near Dungiven and dated to the late 16th or early 17th century. Textile expert Audrey Henshall concluded the cloth — later dubbed the Ulster tartan — was probably woven in County Donegal.

Green that reads as Irish

Whether or not Catherine intended the nod, the skirt's deep-green palette carries a more familiar reading of Irish symbolism. It follows the emerald McQueen coats she wore to the St Patrick's Day parades in 2025 and 2026.

The outing was substantive too. With Prince William, she spent the afternoon spotlighting the New Employment Opportunities Network, a pilot helping young people at risk of homelessness find work. The scheme runs through Homewards, the Royal Foundation's five-year program to make homelessness rare, brief and unrepeated.

The couple began at The Commons, a former church on Belfast's Ormeau Road now repurposed as a community hub. The aim is to get businesses across Homewards' other flagship locations — Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Lambeth, Newport and Sheffield — to join the network, with a target of 50 participating employers by June 2028.