Meghan Markle and Prince Harry continued their quest to prove how arty and cool they are today by releasing, in honor of Prince Charles’ birthday, a black and white image of baby Archie nestled in his father’s arms while the birthday boy looks on.
Kate and William celebrated the occasion by releasing a much squarer color picture of Charles, Kate, and baby Louis.
Despite the advent of color photography in 1855, Harry and Meghan have displayed a penchant for publishing personal images of occasions like weddings and christenings, not to mention the reveal of their baby’s grasping a finger, in a moody, sometimes sepia-toned, black and white.
Of course, one doesn’t have to dive too deep into the trendier corners of Instagram these days to realize that going monochrome is very much of the moment, telegraphing a mature and thoughtful brand of what we might term serious-chic.
Black and white photos also have another advantage: They really annoy the newspapers and media as they don’t sell as as well, or look as jolly on a website home page, as color ones.
Still, at least you could see their faces, unlike the picture of them watching the fireworks at their wedding they sent out last Christmas (which shared a striking similarity to an image Meghan sent out after her wedding to her first husband).
The problem with all this hipness—as Meghan and Harry would know if they took any notice of their press team, employed at vast expense by, funnily enough, Prince Charles—is that the big fans of the royalty, the massive silent majority on whose approval Meghan and Harry may not realize their positions actually depend, are by and large considerably less groovy folk who would actually like a nice, normal snap.
Perhaps like the one posted by William and Kate?