The Crown’s Kate Middleton is on the brink of fame. Why is everyone talking about her hair?

For Meg Bellamy, the 21-year-old British actor who plays the young Kate Middleton in the sixth and final series of The Crown, a head of long, “liquid brunette” locks was an essential part of the costume.

So it may come as some surprise that industry insiders are predicting Bellamy will chop off her glossy Kate haircut as soon as The Crown’s publicity tour is over.

There’s a very good reason to do it: a transformational haircut has become a tried and tested strategy to ensure that a newcomer doesn’t spend the rest of their acting career being typecast, associated forever with their breakout role.

“It is so easy to get typecast,” says British celebrity stylist Kyle De’Volle, who works with Lily Allen and Rita Ora. “So [a haircut] is like a total rebrand, a clean slate for her as an actress. Obviously, she’ll have The Crown under her belt but I’m sure she’s going to want to do more diverse roles. We work in a very fickle industry and I think that unless people see the change, they will just put you in a box.”

This particular strategy from the style playbook was most famously established by Emma Watson, who went for a pixie cut as soon as she was done playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films. More recently, Daisy Edgar-Jones, whose breakout status came from her portrayal of Marianne in Normal People, turned to celebrity hair stylist George Northwood for a choppy new bob last year. Emma Corrin, who was propelled to stardom as the young Diana in The Crown, used hair to prove their versatility, trying out a series of bold looks including peroxide curtains and a buzz cut. Then there’s Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor, Twilight’s Kristen Stewart … the list goes on.

A haircut is just one tool a rising star can use as they introduce their personal style to a new-found audience. It is also an indicator of the way their world has been transformed, often in a short space of time, from regular citizen to recognisable celebrity.

Before she became famous, Bellamy’s wardrobe mostly consisted of chain-store buys from H&M. Now she is being courted by luxury fashion houses, with brands falling over themselves to dress The Crown’s latest star.

Bellamy has not, as one UK tabloid report suggested, “beaten the Duchess of Sussex to become a face of Dior”. She did attend the Parisian label’s haute couture show in July and ready-to-wear show in September, sitting in the front row as what Dior describes as “a friend of the house”, but no deal as an ambassador has been confirmed.

That’s not to say that it won’t happen at some point in the near future, though. Signing with a luxury fashion brand is a rite of passage for new talents these days – Emma Corrin is the face of Miu Miu, and Emma Watson was the face of Burberry for a hot minute but now fronts Prada campaigns.

Dior’s not the only company interested in Bellamy. With help from stylist Felicity Kay, who also works with actors Ncuti Gatwa and Paul Mescal, Bellamy is playing the fashion field. This is key to landing a major luxury-fashion gig: brands need to see Bellamy looking the part, appearing on best-dressed lists and generating column inches for her style before they put real money behind her.

“It’s a formula that’s worked for years between actresses and fashion houses,” says De’Volle. “It’s the done thing now for any young actress I’ve worked with, especially with the styling, because that’s how you get attention.

“If you’re more on the conservative side of dressing, you could be compatible with Dior or Chanel. If you’re a bit more edgy, you’d be a better fit with Mugler or Jean Paul Gaultier. It has a lot to do with where you want to be positioned, branding-wise. And that’s what we use [a bit of fashion] edge to achieve.”

This explains why we’ve seen Bellamy wearing pieces from Valentino, Prada and Gucci recently. (Gucci also describes Bellamy as “a friend of the house”.) Essentially, it means the labels love to loan her pieces for events and photo shoots but that she’s not on the payroll, nor are there any restrictions about which other brands she can wear. For The Crown’s Los Angeles premiere, Bellamy wore Stella McCartney – a designer whose values Bellamy shares through being vegan and not wearing leather.

In an interview with Luxury magazine in the UK, Bellamy admitted that the attention she’s received as a result of her recent fame has been quite a whirlwind. “I didn’t even anticipate the fashion side of it,” she said. “That’s definitely more of a culture-shock, pinch-me spectacle, much more than [working on] The Crown ever felt like.

“I really love tailoring, which I never thought would be me. I love a masculine look just as much as a glam dress. I’m still figuring out what ‘me’ is in terms of style. But when you put something on, and you feel confident, like it’s an expression of yourself, then it must be right.”

She may not have nailed a particular aesthetic, but who has at 21? In the meantime, Meg Bellamy’s having a wonderful time finding out.

The Telegraph

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