I'm a royal fashion expert and Meghan Markle's one gamble hasn't paid off

When Meghan Markle arrived at Paris Fashion Week cloaked in a Balenciaga cape-style suit, it was meant to be a mic-drop moment. Instead, it landed like a thunderclap with no echo - all drama, little magic.

The sweeping silhouette swallowed her frame and dulled her usual polish, turning the power suit she has long redefined from a timeless staple into a ponderous sermon in fabric. Balenciaga's monastic draping and scalpel-sharp tailoring can be sublime on the runway; on the royal, 44, it felt heavy, almost funereal.

A stark departure from the crisp minimalism that once defined her royal style and pitted her against the likes of Princess Kate.

This isn't the Duchess of Sussex's first flirtation with capes. In 2018, she dazzled at a Fijian state dinner in a sleek blue Safiyaa cape gown, showing how the cut can convey authority with lightness.

And in 2020, she closed her royal chapter in a fiery red version at the Mountbatten Festival of Music, one of her last appearances on British soil representing the Crown.

Those looks had presence and lift - they telegraphed authority without losing lightness.

Her latest draped look in Paris feels striking not only for its scale and severity but because it marks the closest she has been to the UK in nearly two years, situating her once again in Europe's high-fashion orbit.

Yet the proportions tipped from bold into brutal. The effect was less modern icon, more miscast movie villain - a dramatic silhouette without the ease or energy to carry it off.

Balenciaga under Demna thrives on provocation and architectural extremes; it's a house built for the hyper-styled, not the hesitant.

Against that backdrop, Meghan's choice looked less like a confident debut and more like a calculated risk with someone else's narrative attached.

After opening Paris Fashion Week in a pristine white cape-style suit, Meghan doubled down with her second, darker act:a dramatic black Balenciaga cape dress designed to eclipse even her first look.

Instead of a triumphant follow-up, the shift from light to dark amplified the sense that she had stepped into someone else's story.

Prince Harry's wife walked straight into a brand-rehabilitation narrative she didn't need.

What could have been a bold reinvention of the little black dress read instead as an over-managed, underwhelming gamble. This time, Meghan's gamble looked less like a masterstroke and more like a misfire - proof that not every runway provocation translates into real-life chic.