Born to one of Queen Victoria’s goddaughters, Nicky Haslam socialised with Princess Diana, has worked for King Charles, is a good friend of Queen Camilla and once sang in front of Queen Elizabeth.
The waspish interior designer is, however, not impressed by the Prince and Princess of Wales. Haslam, 84, accuses the heir to the throne and his wife of being ‘childish’, unsophisticated and dressing like dummies in a department store window.
So disappointed is he that he’s included them on his ‘Common List’, his playfully snobbish compilation of things that have caused him distress over the past year.
The list is printed on a tea towel, or ‘drying-up cloth’ as he calls it, which is sold to his friends at £40 a time.
The family are included as ‘The Waleses in blue’, referring to the way that they have worn colour co-ordinated outfits. ‘You see endless pictures of the whole family in various shades of blue,’ he tells me. ‘It’s common. It’s so odd to see an entire family dressed in blue. Wouldn’t little Princess Charlotte like to wear white?
‘It’s supposed to suggest a calm upper-classness, which is so dull. If you look at pictures from the old days, the royals had wonderful exotic clothes. But now they look like dummies in Peter Jones’s window.’
He adds of William and Catherine: ‘They do childish things, like play football and games. They couldn’t be less sophisticated. They don’t go to literary lunches and read extraordinary books or go to the theatre.’
The Old Etonian also includes ‘fly-pasts’ on his list. ‘They come at every single opportunity, they even happen in France now,’ he tells me.
‘The royals must also find them common. Wouldn’t you after the 100th fly-past? Wouldn’t you rather get inside and have a drink?’
Haslam, whose clients have included Sir Mick Jagger and Sir Rod Stewart, also condemns Wimbledon, telling me: ‘The people who go to it, the whole atmosphere, is now common, there is no glamour whatsoever. It’s no longer elite.’
He insists that the Queen will be amused by his list: ‘I think she’ll have a laugh about it. She is sophisticated, she’s well-read, very funny and very quick.’
In 2018, Haslam described the Duchess of Sussex’s family as ‘frightfully common’. Referring to the absence of Meghan’s father from her wedding in Windsor, he said: ‘It would have been awful if that huge lump [Thomas Markle] had been there.
‘The royals probably don’t quite know how to deal with them.’
He did make an exception for Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, saying: ‘One person who wasn’t common was her mother.’
He also criticised Meghan’s £200,000 Givenchy bridal gown by British designer Clare Waight Keller.
‘I didn’t very much like her dress – it didn’t fit, among other things,’ he said. ‘It should have been made of thinner stuff, it seemed to be made of concrete.’
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
