Whether a blush-pink Dior Bar jacket to greet Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte at the start of their state visit in 2025, a sky-blue jumper in support of Ukraine in 2022, or a maple-leaf brooch during her tour of Canada in 2011, Catherine, Princess of Wales’s outfits for official engagements are an exercise in diplomatic dressing. This morning’s arrival in Belfast offered another possible example: a longline woollen coat worn over a pussy-bow blouse, tucked into an Emilia Wickstead tartan skirt that skimmed her Gianvito Rossi pumps.

Though most closely associated with Scotland, tartan has a history in the north of Ireland stretching back centuries. In 1956, tartan trews were discovered in peaty soil near Dungiven, dating from around the late 16th or early 17th century. Textile expert Audrey Henshall suggested that the cloth – which became known as the Ulster tartan – had probably been woven in County Donegal. Whether or not Catherine intended a nod to that history, her skirt’s deep-green palette offered a more familiar reading of Irish symbolism. Take, for instance, the emerald McQueen coats she wore to the St Patrick’s Day parades in 2026 and 2025.

Together with Prince William, the Princess spent a drizzly afternoon highlighting the New Employment Opportunities Network, a pilot programme helping young people at risk of homelessness find work. It is run through Homewards, The Royal Foundation’s ambitious five-year programme to make homelessness rare, brief and unrepeated. The couple began their engagements at The Commons, a former church on the Ormeau Road repurposed as a community hub, with meetings with beneficiaries of the scheme scheduled for later in the day. The visit aims to encourage businesses in Homewards’s other flagship locations – Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Lambeth, Newport and Sheffield – to join the network, with a target of 50 participating employers by June 2028.

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