Well lookie here, we have a right turn up for the books.
Call her the dark horse of royalty. A princess with about as much face recognition as the winner of the latest season of Moldovan MAFS has just pipped Kate, The Princess of Wales and Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex to the post.
Every year, the fashion site UFO No More releases a meticulously compiled list of the cost of the new clothing debuted by royal women in the previous year, tracking 1464 pieces in 2025 across 11 monarchies.
(UFO? That stands for unidentified fashion object.)
Drum roll please… we have a winner and she’s none of the usual spendy suspects.
Atop the podium we have Princess Maria-Olympia of Greece, who looks like she was created by a six-year-old prompted AI to render a perfect princess.
Last year the 29-year-old, who goes by Olympia, wore AUD $426,516 worth (€246,614) of new clothing, specifically 79 identifiable new pieces, which works out, on average, to $6,008-per-item.
MORE: Real reason Harry, Meghan booted from royal home
Not au fait with Olympia? Here is the low down.
She’s the granddaughter of the last King of Greece, King Constantine, and the daughter of Prince Pavlos and Princess Marie Chantal of Greece.
Unfortunately what they have in spades in looks and money, they lack in the actual throne department, given the Greek monarchy was given the boot from the country in 1973 after a military coup.
MORE: ‘Final straw’: Meghan Harry quit UK over gift
Still their blood could not be bluer, with the Greek royal family related to every royal house in Europe and with King Charles serving as Olympia’s godfather.
Tatler has previously anointed Olympia as the coolest person in the world.
She has four brothers whose names are, Prince Constantine-Alexios, Prince Achileas-Andreas, and Prince Odysseus-Kimon, all of whom with their floppy blond locks and ridiculously good looks make them look like a pantheon of young Greek gods as cast by Real Housewives producers.
They were was raised in a home on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, one of the best streets in London where houses can cost $200 million, along with properties in Harbour Island in the Bahamas, a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, a 32,000 acre hunting retreat in Yorkshire, an estate in the Cotswolds, and now a Manhattan penthouse too.
The family also makes the British royal family look like they are dangerously close to struggle street.
Olympia’s mother, children’s wear designer Marie Chantal, happens to have been, pre-marriage, one of the famed Miller sisters whose father Robert Miller basically invented duty free and is worth just shy of about $3 billion.
(King Charles is only worth about $1.2 billion. How does he make ends meet?)
Which is probably how Olympia can afford to spend close to half a million dollars on duds and shiny bits and bobs, beating out even usual UFO list winner, Princess Charlene of Monaco who this year only managed $424,677 to come in second place.
Taking the bronze is Meghan, but she takes out the top prize if you consider that she has to earn her own money and the notion of a fat cheque from a doting billionaire King is but a distant memory.
Last year the duchess wore $291,993 worth of new clothes, specifically 207 new pieces, at an average of $1,448 per item.
However, despite 12 months of reminding us of her sartorial perfection, over the same period she and husband Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex have suffered the slings and arrows of career misfortune.
They re-signed with Netflix, but only for a first look deal, those glorious fistfuls of cash long gone, and not a whisper has been heard about a possible second season of the duchess’ Confessions of a Female Founder podcast.
Meanwhile, the duchess’ rebranding as lifestyle doyenne was met with deflated souffle-like ratings (season two and the Christmas special did not make the top ten) and her As Ever brand of totally unnecessary kitchen fripperies, like herbal teas and crepe mix, not exactly setting the commercial world ablaze.
Initial drops sold out in under an hour but all her products, including her much ballyhooed fruit ‘spreads’, are now permanently, readily available and even went on sale late last year.
Either she’s worked out supply chain kinks or the novelty of buying $47-a-jar honey to smear on your toast has waned dramatically.
None of this would seem to have affected the Duchess of Sussex’s, checks notes, truly bloody sublime style.
Say what you will about Meghan, something the internet has no problem doing, but in my book she is by far and away one of the most stylish titled women going.
You have to go all the way to seventh place, past Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, Zara Tindall (I know, a real surprise), and the Duchess of Edinburgh to get to Kate, The Princess of Wales. Last year, the 75 new pieces she rolled out cost a grand total of $142,846.
According to the forensic tracking of expert Patricia Treble of Write Royalty, the princess logged 68 of engagements in 2025, which works out at her wearing $2,100 clothing per outing.
There’s truly no issue when it comes to footing the tab for Kate’s wardrobe.
When Prince William was elevated to being the Prince of Wales he also took ownership of the $2 billion Duchy of Cornwall trust, which brings in more than $47 million-a-year in income for the Waleses.
(Because I’ve got the calculator out, that works out at them making $128,000 per day.)
There are a few other surprise appearances by other members of the British royal family on the UFO list.
We have Zara Tindall coming in at fifth place wearing $157,433 of new things, Sophie, The Duchess of Edinburgh is sixth, with $144,770, Princess Beatrice, in tenth place, with a bill of $94,827 and Princess Eugenie at number 17 having only managed $75,641
However, there is one major black hole of cosmic unknowability in all this – did they actually pay for any of it? Kate, as a working member of the royal family, cannot accept any freebies or discounts, having to pay the full sticker price for everything.
Those same diktats don’t cover Meghan or Zara or Beatrice who can all keep whatever products are sent their way by designers and brands angling for the publicity of their clothes being worn by royalty.
Let me get my crystal ball out and make a prediction about who will ultimately triumph in the style stakes in the decades to come: Princess Lilibet. She will one day be able to plunder the extraordinary, crammed-full, wonderland of a wardrobe of her mother Meghan. There might be no luckier duck.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news.com.au ’
