Even the most impeccably styled person can suffer from fashion regrets.

Kate Middleton's style is so well known that it literally has a name for its impact on the British economy. The Kate Middleton effect is valued at £1 billion (equivalent to over $1.2 billion in 2024 dollars) for the British fashion industry, driven by royal fans who buy items they see her wearing in public.

While few would question Kate's fashion choices, the royal herself is not without occasional doubts, as she did in December 2019 when she wore a Christmas outfit that she came to regret.

From the outside, the look was perfect. It was a gray Catherine Walker coat accessorized with a hat, clutch bag, and shoes in a rich forest green hue. To be fair, however, it was not necessarily about aesthetics that Kate took issue with the outfit.

Kate was photographed in this outfit when she joined the rest of the royal family for a Christmas Day church service at St. Mary Magdalen Church in Sandringham Manor in 2019, and according to the Mirror, the weather was “unseasonably warm” that day.

According to the magazine, in a brief chat with a 19-year-old royal fan named Rachel Anville, the then Duchess of Cambridge (Kate's former royal title before becoming Prince and Princess of Wales with her husband Prince William in 2022) said that the heavy Catherine Walker's coat was not very comfortable, she admitted.

“Kate was talking to my daughter about the clothes and she felt it was too hot and said, ‘I shouldn't have worn this,’” Karen, Rachel's mother, told Metro at the time. 'I'm talking about dolls with Charlotte and my daughter is talking about fashion with Kate. It wasn't fake, it was a real discussion; it lasted about a minute, but it was tailored to my daughter and it was like talking to a friend."

The royals spent most of the day smiling, but some photos gave a glimpse of the discomfort Kate spoke of to Anvil.

Karen Anville and her daughter Rachel are avid royal fans and are said to have made many trips to Sandringham to see the royal family leave the church on Christmas Day, and Karen is an amateur photographer who has worked with the royal “Fab Four” (Prince William, Kate Middleton, Prince Harry, and Meghan Markle), who became famous for taking one of the first photographs of the royal family.

Karen also opened up about her interaction with Kate's children at the time after presenting Princess Charlotte with a doll during a royal greeting moment.

“You can tell they were well brought up,” she said (from Harper's Bazaar). They're not uptight, they're not uptight. They have great parents, and their parents are all about talking to the world, and they are very empathetic.”