In October 2018, during the Sussexes’ highly publicized royal tour of Australia, a heavily pregnant Meghan Markle stepped out in one of the most inappropriate outfits imaginable for a working royal. The Reformation “Pineapple” striped linen maxi dress – a cheap-looking, paper-thin number with spaghetti straps and a thigh-high slit – was so sheer and insubstantial that it left little to the imagination. Close-up examinations of the fabric reveal exactly how flimsy it was: no lining, no structure, just gauzy linen that clung and revealed far more than any self-respecting Duchess should ever allow in public.
Royal watchers and critics at the time rightly called it out as trashy, unregal, and completely unsuitable for a woman who had just announced she was expecting the couple’s first child (later revealed to be Archie). Comments poured in labeling the look a “beach caftan” better suited for throwing over a bikini after sunbathing than representing the Crown on an official engagement. Some noted it looked like “a roll of tea towels sewn together.” The fabric was so thin that light passed straight through it, making any undergarments – including what appeared to be a thong – potentially visible depending on the angle and sunlight. Meghan knew exactly what she was doing. This was no accident.
While other senior royals carefully adhered to protocol and dignity, Markle repeatedly pushed boundaries with revealing slits, bare shoulders, and now this see-through disaster. She cradled her barely-there baby bump in the dress while walking the wooden jetty on Fraser Island with Prince Harry, as if the optics of a near-transparent maternity look on a Commonwealth tour somehow projected elegance rather than attention-seeking. The dress sold out quickly thanks to the usual “Meghan effect,” but that commercial success only highlights how she prioritized personal branding and California-casual exhibitionism over the dignity expected of her role.
And where was Prince Harry in all this? The same man who grew up with the example of his mother Princess Diana, his sister-in-law the Princess of Wales, and countless royal women who understood the importance of modest, appropriate dress? He walked hand-in-hand with her, smiling, apparently oblivious or indifferent. As one sharp observer put it, any normal husband would have looked at that flimsy linen and thought, “My mother, my sister-in-law, my cousins don’t wear thongs like this – maybe it’s not appropriate.” But Harry, ever the enabler, registered nothing. His failure to intervene or even notice speaks volumes about his judgment and his willingness to let Meghan’s impulses override any sense of royal duty or basic propriety.
This was not an isolated lapse. The 2018 Australia tour was littered with Markle’s boundary-testing choices, culminating later in a Givenchy pleated skirt that also turned see-through in the sun and revealed her underwear line. The pattern is clear: a determined effort to insert Hollywood flash and personal provocation into an institution built on restraint and service. Harry’s continued loyalty to this approach – long after they stepped back from royal duties – only compounds the damage. Years later, the couple’s return visits and ongoing publicity still invite the same scrutiny of her judgment and his spinelessness.
The thin linen dress on Fraser Island remains a perfect symbol of everything wrong with the Sussex project: self-regard over service, provocation over protocol, and a husband too weak or too blind to correct course. Meghan Markle knew the dress was inappropriate. Prince Harry should have known better. Both failed spectacularly.
