Of course my imagination is completely in overdrive since Harry and Meghan jetted into Birmingham, are you kidding me? I think about this story almost 24 hours per day.
Now I’m sitting here conjuring images of Harry at polo practice while Meghan gets fitted for brand-new leather riding boots in some impossibly old English cobbler’s workshop. I’m imagining horses, exposed brick stable yards, enormous leather totes, muddy Range Rovers and the Duchess of Sussex wandering through it all looking as though Ralph Lauren personally dressed her that morning.
I know. They’ve barely unpacked. But indulge me. Because if Harry and Meghan really are settling into life in the English countryside, there is something delicious about imagining what their ordinary days might eventually look like.
And by ordinary, obviously, I mean Sussex ordinary.
Harry playing polo is hardly a stretch of the imagination. He has played the sport for most of his life, and it remains one of those pursuits that seems completely natural to him. Put him on a horse with a polo mallet in his hand and suddenly Prince Harry looks very much at home.
So perhaps one afternoon Harry heads off to practice. Meghan has things to do.
She isn’t there in a cocktail dress watching adoringly from beneath a marquee. This isn’t Cartier Cup Meghan. This is Tuesday afternoon, I’ll meet you after practice Meghan. And naturally, I have dressed her.
Enter Ralph Lauren
For my entirely imaginary afternoon, Meghan is wearing slim ivory trousers tucked into beautiful chocolate-brown leather riding boots, a romantic white blouse with extravagant lace-edged ruffles and a perfectly tailored navy double-breasted blazer with gleaming gold buttons. Add an enormous chocolate leather tote matching the boots and we’re done.
It is Ralph Lauren country without looking like a Ralph Lauren costume.
More importantly, there is something wonderfully appropriate about putting an American Duchess in perhaps the quintessential American interpretation of English aristocratic style.
Ralph Lauren has spent decades romanticising precisely this world: horses, polo, leather, old houses, beautiful tailoring, battered boots and that peculiar mixture of grandeur and informality that makes country clothes look better when they aren’t quite perfect.
And Meghan brings California to it. That’s the combination I find so intriguing about imagining her back in England. I don’t think Meghan’s English-country aesthetic would ever be completely English.
Why should it be?
She’s American. She’s Californian. She’s spent the past six years building an entirely different visual identity thousands of miles away from palace life. Put that woman into the English countryside and something interesting happens.
Meanwhile, Harry is on the field
So let’s continue our fantasy.
Meghan walks along the exposed-brick corridor beside the stables. A trainer circles a magnificent black stallion in the schooling arena beside her. She keeps walking.
Across the stable courtyard she goes, boots on cobblestones, tote in hand, horses being led in and out behind her.
Eventually the courtyard opens onto the polo grounds. Harry is still practicing.
There are several riders on the field, horses thundering across immaculate grass while Meghan makes her way toward the gate. But she isn’t standing there gazing wistfully at her husband. She’s checking her phone. Because even in my fantasies, Meghan has emails. Harry can finish his chukka.
And eventually, practice is over This may actually be my favourite part of the imaginary afternoon. The horses begin coming off the field. Harry heads back toward the stable yard, dusty, sweaty and carrying his helmet. Meghan is waiting on the other side of the wooden gate.
He leans across. She leans in. A quick kiss.
Nothing ceremonial. Nothing particularly royal. No receiving line. No photographers officially assembled for the occasion. Just husband and wife meeting at the end of polo practice before presumably climbing into the car and getting on with whatever comes next.
And strangely, that is the English life I find easiest to imagine for Harry and Meghan.
Not a return to royal life. Not Meghan suddenly appearing in tiaras and performing engagements three days a week.
Something much more interesting. A distinctly Sussex version of English country life: horses and laptops, polo and business calls, ancient stone and California polish, muddy boots and enormous leather handbags. Half Cotswolds. Half Montecito.
And, on this particular imaginary afternoon, a lot of Ralph Lauren.
Images by ChatGPT
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