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How Pippa Middleton finally put that wedding appearance behind her

The Middleton sisters, at the wedding of Catherine to Prince William in 2011 - Getty 
The Middleton sisters, at the wedding of Catherine to Prince William in 2011 - Getty

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl who captured the heart of a handsome prince. They married in Westminster Abbey on a glorious spring day and the world looked on and cried: “Good Lord, get a load of her sister’s backside!” For this was not just any bottom, but the platonic form of rears: sassy, pert, and saucily attention-seeking, it boasted a knowingness that seemed to say: “I see you looking, I see you and I salute you. Well may you gaze.”

It’s owner, Pippa Middleton, the 27-year-old maid of honour, was callipygian (“having well-shaped buttocks,” after Aphrodite Kallipygos, who raises her robe to admire her own haunches) not with the ludicrous hyperbole of a Kardashian sister, but the athletic girl-next-doorsiness of the Middleton sorority. And Pippa was all the racier for it, as the bride’s hot-as-Hades foil in what resembled a shapely wedding dress. Bright white and artfully fitted, this second Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen creation came backed with a spine of covered buttons that only accentuated the younger sister’s behind as she bent to adjust the bride’s train.

Twitter exploded with the hashtag “pippasbum,” along with exhortations that our heroine #marryHarry. While even those individuals who had never previously given rumps much thought paused in what they were doing and intoned: “This was an a***.” Pippa’s posterior appeared to comprise not so much rear of the year, as the cheeks of the still young century, worthy of their own commemorative mug. In Britain, they lent a certain Carry On movie / seaside postcard element to all the pomp. Abroad, they spread the message that we Brits still had it – sex appeal in addition to ceremony. Rumours that their pertness had been the product of strategic padding were viewed as an assault on national pride.

Pippa Middleton later said her dress had been designed to blend in with the bride’s. rather than stand out
Pippa Middleton later said her dress had been designed to blend in with the bride’s. rather than stand out

With no little understatement, our heroine would subsequently remark: “It’s a bit startling to achieve global recognition before the age of 30, on account of your sister, brother-in-law and your bottom”. And, yet, the celebrity that this curious cultural moment brought with it offered an obvious opportunity. It was an opportunity that Middleton – a public relations officer by trade, albeit for her parents’ firm – had already laid the ground for in an interview released a canny two weeks before her sister’s engagement was announced in November 2010. In it, 27-year-old Pippa promoted her family’s company, Party Pieces, to the anxiety of courtiers, keen that the Middletons not be seen as profiting from their royal connection.

In fact, Pippa had long been a subject of interest precisely because of this connection. As Scottish university students, the Middletons are said to have been known as “the Wisteria sisters” such was their penchant to climb. As Kate had shared digs with Prince William at St Andrews, so at Edinburgh her sibling boasted Lord Edward Innes-Ker, a son of the Duke of Roxburghe, and Earl Percy, heir apparent to the Duke of Northumberland as housemates. If it is hard being a younger sister, forever hanging off another’s coat-tails, then she made the best of matters. By 2008, the attention she gained saw Tatler declaring Pippa "the Number 1 Society Singleton”. Already, she had the status of a mononym.

Following the global exposure of that April 2011 wedding, Ms Middleton set out to prove that her bottom came with a brain. Whether or not her book deal with Penguin testified to this remains a moot point. Celebrate, a guide to party planning, published in autumn 2012, came with a £400,000 advance. Its sales were rather lower than anticipated, while satirists had a field day with lines such as “Tea bags should go into the teapot,” and the admonition to roast a turkey for Christmas.

However, the preceding April, Time had listed Middleton as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and she began contributing to The Spectator, Waitrose Food magazine, and Vanity Fair, for whom she was appointed a contributing editor. A fortnightly column at The Telegraph appeared for six months before our heroine moved on to pastures new. In 2015, she filmed a series of reports for US talk programme Today, but decided against full-time work in the States, despite being offered £400,000 by NBC. A charity cookbook followed, in which she argued that a home-cooked meal was the way to a man’s heart, yet admitted to not having cooked all the recipes.

Leveraging her celebrity, while not inviting accusations of milking her relationship with royalty, appeared to present a challenge, leaving Middleton, if not floundering, then floating. Doubtless it would have been possible to settle down to a “normal” job, but a normal job did not appear to be what Pippa wanted. Besides, there were weddings, balls, tennis and polo matches to attend, events at which she – like her illustrious sister – gave good hat. The siblings’ style penchants are very similar: long, floral frocks with boxy coats for the summer season, Sloaney athleisure off-duty, and an increasing transition from mid-market to designer.

Attention naturally fell on Middleton’s love life. In 2007, while staying at the glamorous Eden Rock hotel on the Caribbean island of St Barts, she met James Matthews, son of the hotel’s owners. In the wake of a romance with cricket player Alex Loudon, whom she was seeing at the time of the royal wedding, Pippa went on a series of dates with Matthews in 2012. However, she then became an item with stockbroker Nico Jackson. After this ended in October 2015, our heroine was spotted leaving Matthews’s flat. The pair becoming engaged the following July, when Pippa received a four-carat, asscher radiant diamond ring, estimated at £200,000.

Matthews is a former professional racing driver turned billionaire hedge-fund manager, whose younger brother, Spencer, was the anti-hero of the reality television series Made in Chelsea. His father is Laird of Glen Affric, a title bought (bought!) when he purchased a 10,000-acre Scottish estate in 2008, meaning that Middleton will one day acquire the courtesy title “Lady Glen Affric”.

The couple married in May 2017 near Bucklebury Manor, the Middleton family seat, presenting mother Carole with the party-planning opportunity the House of Windsor had deprived her of. Think: a £100,000 marquee plus Spitfire fly-by. And how thrilling to have a tiny prince and princess (George and Charlotte) among the bride’s attendants. Pippa sported a high-necked, figure-fitting lace gown by Giles Deacon, a Stephen Jones veil, Robinson Pelham tiara, and the earrings she had worn for her sister’s wedding by way of her “something old”. The couple have gone on to have two children: a son, Arthur, born in 2018, and a daughter, Grace, arriving in March this year.

Pippa Middleton and James Matthews on their wedding day, in 2017 - PA
Pippa Middleton and James Matthews on their wedding day, in 2017 - PA

Now 37, Pippa is still subject to the kind of scrutiny epitomised by the recent Hello inquiry: “Have you ever wondered what the sister of Britain's future Queen eats in a day to stay looking so trim?” In the decade that has passed since her backside upstaged her sibling, she has said that she has felt “bullied” at times, finding fame “really difficult,” not least when tabloid picture desks were receiving 400 images of her a day. “I was surprised and still don't understand it,” she observed five years after the event. Her dress, she has noted, was designed to blend in with the bride’s rather than stand out.

Ten years on from bottom mania, one would like to say that it wouldn’t happen now, in our #MeToo age of greater sensitivity to the objectifying of young women. I’m not convinced. It is notable that when Meghan Markle got married in May 2018, she chose to dispense with the role of maid of honour.