Denmark's Queen Mary wore her 2006 Prada coat again: at least the sixth time in 20 years, at the Vietnamese president's state visit

While Vietnamese President To Lam and his wife Ngo Phuong Ly are on a state visit to Denmark, Queen Mary is carrying on with the programme - and with a fashion lesson no brand is selling. On the second day of the visit, 20 October, she wore a navy Prada coat with a strap around the neck and a brown leather belt detail. She first wore the coat on 25 February 2006, at the christening of India Handwerk.

She has returned to it regularly ever since: on 25 December 2011, 24 January 2012, 7 November 2021 and 25 November 2024, when a memorial to Countess Danner was unveiled. This time she paired it with a colourful checked skirt and comfortable leather boots with a wide heel. Fashion editors call it circular fashion. Isn't that what our grandmothers simply called "a good coat"?

The first day of the visit was also about repetition. At the welcome ceremony on 19 October, Mary wore a blue tweed dress by Danish designer Lasse Spangenberg, which she first wore in Estonia in January 2026. In the evening, at the gala dinner at Christiansborg Palace, she wore a blue dress with a sequinned bodice and a velvet skirt by Jesper Høvring - for the fourth time; she first wore it at the "Bambi" awards in Berlin in 2014. She completed the look with an 1898 diamond and sapphire tiara that belonged to Denmark's Queen Alexandrine and can also be worn as a necklace or a brooch.

On the morning of the second day the queen visited a greenhouse farm in Østerbro, and then had lunch with the Vietnamese president's wife.

Yes, it's easy to repeat outfits when the coat is Prada and made to last. But the message holds for a coat bought at a market too. How many of us have a coat we'll still wear twenty years from now - and how many bought a new one this autumn just because the old one is "out of fashion"?