Princess Beatrice’s wacky hat sells for $130,000 on eBay
Posted May 24, 2011 11:17 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Remember the laughs – and gasps – that greeted Princess Beatrice when she showed up for the royal wedding wearing that, well, unusual hat? Well now the young royal is getting the last laugh.
Beatrice, 22, put the blush-colored “fascinator” up for auction on eBay, and it’s now been snapped up by an anonymous bidder – for $130,000! According to People, the princess is donating the cash to two charities: UNICEF and Children in Crisis, the later of which was started by Beatrice’s mother Sarah Ferguson (a.k.a. “Fergie,” the Duchess of York) to provide education to children in some of the world’s poorest countries.
“It has its own personality,” Beatrice said of her head-topper after the sale ended. “And I am so happy that we have raised the most incredible amount of money and can make an even bigger change for the lives of some of the most vulnerable children across the world.”
For the April 29 wedding of her cousin Prince William to Kate Middleton, Beatrice completed her outfit with the topper made by renowned London milliner Philip Treacy. The hat was so unusual that it instantly grabbed headlines, endless commentary and a number of Facebook fan pages, including ones that compared or combined pictures of the headpiece with images of a uterus, a pretzel, an octopus, an antelope, a moose and a reindeer. One fan page jokingly gave the hat credit for killing Osama bin Laden.
Treacy, whose creations can cost about $3,300, also made the electric blue number Beatrice’s sister Princess Eugenie wore to the wedding – and he says he made both hats without any royal input. “No, they didn’t tell me (what they wanted) because I’ve known them for a long time, and I wanted them to look gorgeous and beautiful,” he told HollywoodLife.com. “They trusted me to make them. Gorgeous and beautiful can be open to interpretation. My inspiration was beauty and elegance.”
Well whatever his inspiration, the resulting creation turned out to have an ending perfect for a princess: happily ever after.
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