Inside Meghan Markle's Royal Tour Wardrobe

Meghan Markle’s royal tour wardrobe was never really about any single outfit. Across her time as a working royal, she travelled to a tropical Pacific kingdom, a sunbaked Australian coastline and the medinas of North Africa, and in each place her clothes did a job well beyond looking photogenic on a rope line. They signalled respect, managed a gruelling schedule, and occasionally spoke louder than any official statement could.

Two tours reveal how deliberate that approach was: the sixteen-day tour of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga in October 2018, and a shorter, tightly focused visit to Morocco in February 2019. Looked at side by side rather than outfit by outfit, they tell a story less about individual gowns and more about a consistent philosophy for dressing across climates, cultures and the different registers a working tour demands.

Two tours, one underlying philosophy

The 2018 tour and the 2019 Morocco visit look, on the surface, like very different trips. One ran sixteen days across four countries with more than seventy engagements; the other was a compact three-day visit, from Saturday 23 to Monday 25 February 2019, framed at the time as the couple’s last official trip before Archie’s birth. The wardrobe logic underpinning both, though, was consistent: dress for the local climate and customs, keep a clear line between formal state moments and everyday engagements, and use at least one outfit, deliberately, to say something about the country being visited, the thread that connects a red dress in Tonga to a red dress in Casablanca, sixteen months and half a world apart.

Formal versus casual: a wardrobe in two registers

Every tour wardrobe has to hold two different jobs at once, and Meghan’s approach kept them visibly separate. The formal register showed up at the single unmissable gala of each trip: the Oscar de la Renta gown worn to the Australian Geographic Society Awards in Sydney in October 2018, and the bespoke ivory Dior gown, its long sleeves deliberately modest, worn to an evening reception at the British Ambassador’s residence in Rabat on 24 February 2019. Each was reserved for exactly one moment per trip, a single showstopper rather than a recurring habit.

The casual register did the heavier lifting day to day. In Morocco, that meant a long navy Alice + Olivia blazer over a black top and skinny jeans for a visit to a girls’ education charity in the Atlas Mountains, and later a Breton stripe shirt with skinny jeans and her well-worn J.Crew field jacket for the Moroccan Royal Federation of Equestrian Sports. In 2018, the equivalent was a pair of Outland Denim jeans and, on one occasion, an ASOS maternity dress reported to cost around fifty-six dollars. The pattern holds across both tours: one deliberately elevated moment, surrounded by practical, repeatable daywear built to survive a packed itinerary rather than a red carpet.

Dressing for climate: from tropical heat to Atlas Mountain chill

A tour wardrobe has to answer to geography as much as protocol, and the two trips demanded almost opposite solutions. The 2018 tour moved through genuine tropical conditions in Fiji and Tonga and warm antipodean sun in Australia and New Zealand, calling for breathable fabrics and pieces that could survive humidity and constant movement.

Morocco, by contrast, demanded layering rather than lightness. The couple’s schedule ran from the coastal mildness of Casablanca and Rabat to the noticeably cooler air of the Atlas Mountains around the town of Asni, where the long navy blazer over jeans was as much a practical response to altitude as a style choice. The trip fell in late February, outside Morocco’s hottest months, and the wardrobe reflected it: covered arms, structured outerwear and closed shoes replaced the sundresses of the Pacific leg.

Colour as message: two dresses, two flags

One understated thread running through Meghan’s tour dressing is a recurring, deliberate use of colour to echo a host nation’s symbolism. Arriving in Tonga on 25 October 2018, she wore a red midi dress by the London label Self-Portrait, widely read as a nod to the red of the Tongan flag. Sixteen months later, stepping off the plane at Casablanca’s Mohammed V International Airport on 23 February 2019, she chose a red Valentino cape dress for her arrival in Morocco, a country whose own flag is built around a bold red field.

Neither choice was ever confirmed by the palace as an explicit tribute. Seen together, though, the pattern looks like a personal habit: reaching for a host country’s flag colour for the moment of arrival, the single outfit guaranteed the widest audience before a single engagement has taken place. It is a smaller, quieter cousin of the flag-referencing gowns Queen Elizabeth II wore on state visits for decades, deployed here for an arrival photograph rather than a formal banquet.

Morocco, 2019: modesty as a deliberate diplomatic choice

The Dior gown worn in Rabat was, by most reporting, the single most expensive piece in Meghan’s 2019 wardrobe, and its design was itself a diplomatic decision. The cream, bespoke creation featured long, draped sleeves and a high, covered neckline, a considered nod to Morocco’s sartorial customs in a Muslim-majority country where modest dress, particularly covered shoulders and arms, carries real cultural weight at an official function.

That same instinct ran through the visit’s daywear, not just its showpiece gown. Even her more casual Atlas Mountains look kept to full-length sleeves and trousers, a choice of coverage that read as considered against the more bare-armed silhouettes she had worn in tropical Fiji and Tonga eighteen months earlier. Where the 2018 tour’s diplomatic gestures leaned on a single symbolic garment, Morocco applied the same instinct more consistently across nearly every engagement.

The workhorse pieces: denim, a field jacket and one trusted blazer

Behind every headline gown sits a much less glamorous wardrobe doing most of the actual work, and it is here that Meghan’s two tours look most alike. A well-worn J.Crew field jacket appeared repeatedly across her time as a working royal, including at the Moroccan Royal Federation of Equestrian Sports visit in February 2019, exactly the kind of repeatable outer layer a sixteen-day or three-day itinerary depends on. Denim served a similar purpose on both trips: Outland Denim jeans, chosen partly for the ethical, anti-trafficking story behind the Australian label, featured on the 2018 tour’s second day, while Hatch skinny jeans appeared during Morocco’s equestrian engagement.

These pieces rarely made headlines the way the Dior gown or the Oscar de la Renta dress did, and that was rather the point. The workhorse layer, jeans, a blazer, a field jacket, gave the more symbolic pieces room to stand out precisely because they were the exception rather than the rule.

Why the approach still resonates

Laid side by side, the contrast in scale is striking. The 2018 tour spanned sixteen days and four countries, undertaken so early in a pregnancy it was not yet public when the couple landed in Sydney; it needed genuine range, evening drama, tropical daywear, maternity-conscious separates that could flex across two weeks without a repeated formal look. The 2019 Morocco visit covered a tight three days and a single country, planned as a lower-tempo trip ahead of Archie’s birth, and needed depth rather than breadth: fewer engagements, but a wardrobe where almost every choice carried deliberate cultural weight.

What holds both wardrobes together, across a sixteen-day marathon and a three-day sprint, is less any individual outfit than a consistent set of instincts: dress for the place you’re actually in, keep formal and casual clearly separated, and use at least one outfit as a genuine gesture rather than pure decoration. It is a template other royal women have used in their own ways for decades, but rarely applied quite so visibly, or quite so early in a working royal career.

Browse our Royal Style & Fashion stories for more on how royal women have used clothing as considered communication, and see our outfit-by-outfit look at Meghan Markle’s Packing List for a Royal Tour, Recreated for the full breakdown of the 2018 Australia leg.

Frequently asked questions

What countries did Meghan Markle visit on her 2018 royal tour?

Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand, across sixteen days and more than seventy engagements, on her first tour as a working royal.

When did Meghan Markle visit Morocco?

From Saturday 23 to Monday 25 February 2019, an official three-day visit widely reported as the couple’s last international trip before Archie’s birth.

What did Meghan Markle wear for her arrival in Morocco?

A red Valentino cape dress, worn landing at Casablanca’s Mohammed V International Airport on 23 February 2019, a colour widely read as a nod to the Moroccan flag.

What was the most expensive outfit Meghan Markle wore in Morocco?

A bespoke ivory Dior gown with long, draped sleeves, worn to an evening reception at the British Ambassador’s residence in Rabat, reported as the single most expensive piece in her 2019 wardrobe.

Why did Meghan Markle choose a long-sleeved Dior gown for Morocco?

Its high neckline and full-length sleeves were widely read as a nod to modest dressing customs in Morocco, where covered shoulders and arms carry cultural weight at official functions.

Did Meghan Markle wear casual clothing on the Morocco tour?

Yes. A long navy Alice + Olivia blazer over jeans for a girls’ education charity visit in the Atlas Mountains, and a Breton stripe shirt with jeans and a J.Crew field jacket at the Moroccan Royal Federation of Equestrian Sports.

How is the Morocco tour wardrobe different from the 2018 Australia tour wardrobe?

Morocco was shorter and more tightly focused, with modest, covered dressing applied across nearly every engagement, while the longer 2018 tour needed broader range across tropical, coastal and maternity-conscious pieces.

Did Meghan Markle repeat any tour-dressing habits between 2018 and 2019?

Yes. Both tours opened with a red dress for the arrival photograph, in Tonga in October 2018 and Morocco in February 2019, each read as a discreet nod to the host nation’s flag.

Outfit details, dates and pricing referenced in this article are drawn from contemporaneous fashion and royal reporting on the 2018 Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand tour and the 2019 Morocco visit; described as of 2026.