This morning, at Milan’s Palazzo del Ghiaccio, Max Mara showed a collection of funnel-neck trench coats, unstructured blazers and linen safari jackets in mousy shades of grey and brown for spring/summer 2027. Who’s to say those country-casual pieces won’t make their way into Catherine, Princess of Wales’s wardrobe in six months’s time? Just this afternoon, Kate wore the brand’s double-breasted Ateneo blazer for a visit to Southend-on-Sea.

The Princess paired the jacket – which she previously wore to an engagement at RAF Coningsby in July – with Cartier Trinity earrings, a fine brown jumper and a Laura Lombardi Portrait necklace, while her cropped, dark-brown Joseph Coleman trousers displayed her bare ankles in Boden’s oxblood leather Nya penny loafers. Not the most practical choice, but the sockless look is, according to Liana Satenstein, “the ultimate signifier of luxury”. “A loafer without a sock is not meant to be an all-day look,” the former staffer and footwear fortune-teller said when writing about Julianne Moore’s Gucci look at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. “Imagine traipsing around the city or hauling to work without any blister protection?”

The Princess was, of course, at work for the Forward Trust, a social justice charity of which she has been patron since 2021, supporting people recovering from addiction. There to mark this year’s Addiction Awareness Week, Kate was introduced to the charity’s new community initiative, Forward Growing, which runs weekly gardening sessions designed to connect people with nature. “By talking about it in the open, together we can bring addiction and the harm it causes out of the shadows,” she said for the charity’s Taking Action on Addiction campaign this time last year. “We can reframe this issue with kindness and understanding, and we can help individuals and families coping with addiction know they are not alone.”