There is one part of a woman's wardrobe that has practically vanished here: the hat that is not there to shield you from sun or cold but to say something. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands keeps that craft alive almost single-handedly, and not as a hobby but as a system.

Thirteen years after her coronation, her appearances are remembered less for the dresses than for what she wears on her head - wide-brimmed hats, hair ornaments, turbans, berets. She deliberately avoids classic silhouettes and picks shapes that cannot be ignored. And, more interestingly, she wears them in summer too.

The designer is a collaborator, not a supplier

Most of her most recognisable pieces carry three signatures. The Dutch designer Berry Rutjes makes the boldest: the golden laurel leaves she wore on 25 July this year at WorldPride in Amsterdam, inspired by the myth of Apollo and Daphne and previously seen at Royal Ascot in 2019. He also made the green butterfly creation for King's Day in 2024, in honour of the province of Emmen, known as „the city of butterflies”. And the hand-painted giant rose in copper tones for Prince's Day in 2023.

The Belgian Fabienne Delvigne covers another register - her red turbans, of which at least four variants exist, and the classic wide-brimmed hats. Máxima bought one such model in more than seven colours: beige, grey, red, purple, brown, pale pink and fuchsia. That is not extravagance, it is accounting - one solution that works, multiplied into a palette.

The third name is Philip Treacy, the British milliner who works for half of Europe. She wore his felt hat with the large bow three times in a single year. For the coronation of Charles III he made her a tilted, architectural shape - while working for Charlene of Monaco and Mathilde of Belgium at the same time.

What is worth stealing from this approach

Not the hat. The logic. Máxima wears pieces for ten years and more - the Fabienne Delvigne rose she wore at the enthronement of Japanese Emperor Naruhito in 2019 she had first worn fifteen years earlier, at the christening of her daughter Alexia. She has had the feathered beret since 2015, and it was made by her personal chambermaid, Yolanda. The yellow Max Mara ensemble she wore in Kenya in 2023 she had first put on twelve years before.

This is the opposite of everything the industry sells us. The fashion machine lives off the idea that a garment has a shelf life of one season. The most photographed woman in European fashion wears the same hat after ten years and nobody holds it against her. Is that the privilege of a title, or is she simply right?

Some pieces were not bought at all. In Kenya, alongside yellow raffia earrings from Mango, she wore a traditional Kenyan hat given to her as a gift by local authorities. That is a gesture we know well here - when someone gives you something handmade, you wear it, you do not store it.