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Duchess Sophie Steps Out in Chic Floral Dress & It's From a Brand Beloved by Kate Middleton

Duchess Sophie Steps Out in Chic Floral Dress & It's From a Brand Beloved by Kate Middleton

Yahoo20-05-2025
As of late, Duchess Sophie never puts a foot out of step when it comes to her sartorial selects. Enter her most recent ensemble—a dress paired with a blazer—worn for a visit to Barleylands Farm Park & Village in Billericay, England. I did a double take when I saw it because it was the very same ME+EM Wild Bloom-Print Woven Maxi Dress ($495) I tried on for a story earlier this month.
What makes this look particularly fresh? Florals for spring aren't exactly groundbreaking, but in a maxi length style and with a peek-a-boo keyhole neckline, they feel vibrant and fresh. The pale blue backdrop that the wild blooms are set against also helps—the dress feels earthy, but also bright.
I can attest from my own try-on experience, the fit is impeccable and petite-friendly, though most ME+EM styles come with extra fabric should any style need to be lengthened or adjusted. (I also especially love the ever-so-slight shoulder poof—and Sophie's decision to pair it with a blazer that she can take on and off.)
Rachel Bowie
As for the brand, ME+EM is beloved by more than just the Duchess of Edinburgh. Kate Middleton, Princess Beatrice, even Queen Camilla regularly reach for the U.K. based designer. Now, the bad news: The Wild-Bloom Print is near sold out on the site, but that doesn't mean you can't find alternatives. Here, a couple more that fit the royal bill.
ME+EM
Snag Sophie's exact same look before it fully sells out.
$495 at ME+EM
ME+EM
The florals—in lace form—are more subtle, but the fit (and keyhole detail) is the same.
$595 at ME+EM
ME+EM
The backdrop features a lighter hue, but the blooms are equally wild.
$495 at ME+EM
Duchess Sophie Stuns in Black & White Florals—and It's the Perfect Spring Occasion Wear
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Start ‘The Hunting Wives,' if you can immediately commit to eight hours of television
Start ‘The Hunting Wives,' if you can immediately commit to eight hours of television

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  • Boston Globe

Start ‘The Hunting Wives,' if you can immediately commit to eight hours of television

Beyond that, the writers' goal in making Sophie a Cambridge native seems solely to have been to select the most un-Texas region they could think of, so take that with the eyeroll, sense of pride, or sense of injustice of your choice. Having never lived in Texas, I can't say if the show's depiction of Texas is any more accurate. Advertisement No, what you're getting when you sit down for 'The Hunting Wives' is misbehavior, shenanigans, and hot people getting caught doing both. The show is far more sexually explicit than I expected, and also does not shy away from making the subtext of Sophie's lust for her queen bee friend Margo ( Advertisement Graham and Sophie have moved to Texas so that Graham, an architect, can work for Margo's husband Jed (Dermot Mulroney), which is why Sophie gets absorbed into Margo's friend group. The friends call her Boston, and for at least part of an episode or so she resists their passion for drinking and hunting before succumbing. The series presents their conservative politics with shock value but minimal pushback from the allegedly more progressive Sophie, though arguably there's a lot of showing instead of telling regarding the importance of gun safety and the legality of abortion. Margo's girl group is made up of Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), who has her own history with Margo (this small town in Texas has quite a lot of sapphic conflict), Jill ( 'Hunting Wives' is stuffed with red herrings, plot holes, abundant nudity, a little boar hunting, and about three times as many deaths as you're going to expect going in, not to mention a violent crime rate in that small town that probably outpaces that of most major cities. The final episode is called, no joke, 'Sophie's Choice.' Advertisement What I'm saying is that it's extremely silly, and yet this week, despite having a lot to do, I somehow watched all eight episodes. Enjoy. Lisa Weidenfeld is an arts editor at the Globe.

‘The Hunting Wives' Is Soapy, Sultry Fun
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  • New York Times

‘The Hunting Wives' Is Soapy, Sultry Fun

'The Hunting Wives,' the first season of which is now on Netflix, is ideal summer TV. This lustful, proudly silly drama is just the kind of thing you can be seduced by on a hot day when all you want to do is sit inside and binge. Based on the novel by May Cobb and adapted by Rebecca Cutter ('Hightown'), 'The Hunting Wives' stars Brittany Snow as Sophie, a recent transplant to small-town Texas from Cambridge, Mass. Sophie once had a career in political public relations, but now her main job is to be the wife of Graham (Evan Jonigkeit), a stick-in-the-mud architect, who is working for the local oil baron, Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney). Jed, meanwhile, has G.O.P. aspirations. Sophie is skeptical of her new home — it doesn't help when she attends a party at Jed's house only to discover that it's an N.R.A. benefit. But she is immediately intrigued by Margo (Malin Akerman), Jed's flirtatious wife. Just how flirtatious? Well, within minutes of meeting Sophie in a bathroom, Margo is topless. ('Hunting Wives' is audaciously not safe for work.) Sophie is soon recruited to join Margo's coterie of pals. Their activities involve drinking margaritas, shooting guns and a lot of secret Sapphic action. The tawdry fun works largely because of Akerman, who seems to be having an absolute ball purring in a twangy accent and making bedroom eyes at everyone in her vicinity. Sophie develops a friend-crush that turns into a crush-crush as Margo unleashes the dormant party girl who went sober after a drunk-driving accident. In a modern drama cliché, 'The Hunting Wives' does open with a shot of a bloodied young woman running through the woods, hinting at the murder mystery that will ultimately unfold. When it does, the show kicks into an even more absurd gear with revelations galore, some of them almost delightfully predictable. It's worth keeping in mind: All these people are gun owners. 'The Hunting Wives' sets up a kind of red state-blue state conflict, but the plot is largely the stuff of soapy fantasy. There's nothing new in the idea that beneath all the Bible-thumping and purity rhetoric, there might be a whole lot of dirty stuff going on in rural America. Still, Akerman's performance makes the case that hypocrisy can be liberating. Like Snow's wide-eyed Sophie, you'll have trouble resisting her charms.

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If you've decided to spend the hot summer days journeying to the heart of Texas by binge-watching all eight episodes of The Hunting Wives, you're not alone. And, if you've made it all the way to the end of the show and have questions about the big finale, you're also not alone. Adapted from May Cobb's novel, Netflix's The Hunting Wives has it all: buried secrets, open-carry guns, bisexual affairs, kidnapped teens, questionable parenting, swinging politicians, and corrupt clergy. The show, which TIME's critic described as 'the wildest, silliest, and soapiest wife show ever made,' is such addictive fun that it's easy to go with the Netflix flow and let the episodes roll. By the time the credits appear on the final episode, though, there may be a few bigger questions to answer. We're here to help. The show starts when Sophie (Brittany Snow), her husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit), and their young son arrive in the Lone Star State with liberal ideas, a Tesla, and the hope of a new start. Graham is there to start a job working for Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney), one of the most powerful men in Texas. His socialite wife, Margo (Malin Akerman), quickly takes Sophie under her wing, introducing the wide-eyed waif to her gaggle of girlfriends, including Jill (Katie Lowes), the wife of the megachurch's reverend, and Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), the sheriff's wife. Soon, they have the sober, non-driving, gun-hating, Cambridge girl with a dark past downing tequila shots, doing donuts in the parking lot, shooting a boar, having hot extramarital sex with Margo, and, ominously enough, buying a gun. It's all fun fun fun until a high school girl, Abby (Madison Wolfe) turns up dead in the woods. Turns out that Abby was dating Jill's son, Brad (George Ferrier), and it's revealed that not only did she no longer have her purity ring on, but Sophie's gun is identified as the murder weapon. Despite the clear lack of motive (she didn't even know the girl!), Sophie becomes the prime suspect in the murder. Now shunned by her new friends and her truly terrible husband, Sophie sets out to find the real killer. Along the way, she unearths some of the town's darkest secrets. The Hunting Wives finale brings everything to a head In the last episode, titled 'Sophie's Choice,' the clues and the bodies start piling up, and Sophie, the political PR-turned-girl-detective, realizes that the real killer has been right in front of her the whole time. She just didn't want to see it. The big clue? It all started in the ladies' room. Back to that in a minute. The show did a good job with the build-up, because in Episode 7, the penultimate episode, it felt like the crime had been solved when youth Pastor Pete (Paul Teal) was busted for preying on his flock. He kidnapped one young woman and was behind the disappearance of another missing girl mentioned earlier in the season. He even gave Abby a ride to a party on the night she died and he had her sweater in his car. But though he looked guilty as hell, but he did not kill Abby. The other false lead was Brad's mom, Jill. She openly disliked her son's girlfriend, calling the girl a gold-digger and accusing her of leading her precious boy down a path of fornication and sin. She acted very suspiciously, too, wiping her GPS, changing all her passwords, and furiously cleaning one spot on her car. She was also downright eager to provide Brad with an alibi for the night of the murder, which just so happened to give her an alibi, too. Jill looked even more guilty after Pastor Pete told Sophie that Brad had confided in him that he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and she had gotten an abortion, despite the difficulty accessing one in Deep Red Pro-Life Texas. Even her own son started to suspect the good pastor's wife when it was revealed that she was one of Abby's last outgoing calls—and she happened to have Abby's phone. Sophie believed Jill found out about the abortion and killed Abby to keep her quiet. However, it's revealed that Jill didn't do it either. Why she wiped her GPS and passwords and what she was doing the night of the murder is unclear, but she didn't kill Abby— and soon wound up dead herself. Her death meant Sophie was cleared of the crime and was finally out of jail. Who really killed Abby? Sophie goes back to her life as best she can, including reconnecting with Margo—and finding out what really happened to Abby. What finally cracks the case for Sophie, though, was an offhand remark Margo made to Sophie in the very first episode of the series. The two women first met when Sophie walked in on Margo in the bathroom, digging through the cabinet looking for a menstrual pad. Sophie offered her a tampon, but Margo explained she couldn't use one of those. That comment came back to haunt her, though, because after a long, lusty round of afternoon delight in the bedroom, Sophie uses Margo's bathroom. She is hunting through the drawers looking for some lotion, when she happens upon a box of tampons. Margo denies having ever said she couldn't use tampons, but Sophie remembers it perfectly. Since Sophie is already on high alert because Margo herself has already betrayed her, and Margo's friends had her jailed, she bolts. The moment she is alone, Sophie researches why someone might not be able to use a tampon, including one spicy little item: 'after having an abortion.' Sophie quickly realizes that her friend-turned-lover has been lying to her. Margo has been having an affair with Brad, Jill's son, and Sophie realizes that it wasn't Abby who had the abortion that Pastor Pete mentioned, but Brad's other girlfriend, Margo. When Margo found out she was pregnant with her teenage boyfriend's baby, she had returned to her own dark past for help. Specifically, Margo née Mandy had gone to her biological father for assistance. As a doctor, he not only terminated Margo's pregnancy (despite Texas state law), but also provided her an alibi, claiming that Margo was with him at her brother's near-death bed on the night of the murder. Sophie gets the doctor to admit he lied and then gets Brad to corroborate the pregnancy story. She then goes to confront Margo about her many crimes. To her credit, Margo quickly admits them all. She explains that when a furious Abby confronted her about the affair, pregnancy, and abortion, Margo grabbed the nearest gun—Sophie's—and killed Abby. She then let Sophie take the fall, because she didn't want to jeopardize her husband's run for governor and wanted the beautiful new life she had built for herself to continue. Unsurprisingly, Sophie is unimpressed with Margo's reasoning. Similarly, when Margo tries to tell her husband the truth about it all, he chucks her out of the house. After all, he had already helped her overcome her past as an escort, given her a life as a rich swinger, and was about to make her the first lady of Texas. While killing an innocent young woman was bad, it seems sleeping with another man was the bridge too far for this relationship. Despite murdering a girl and obstructing justice, Margo is not overly concerned about being jailed. She had gone to talk to her drug-addicted brother Kyle (Michael Aaron Milligan) and he told her to get her head on straight. After all, her sometimes-bestie and sometimes-lover Callie is married to the sheriff and he and the DA have closed the case, blaming Jill for the crime, so Margo has nothing to worry about. Plus, Kyle has decided to take care of Sophie for her. He tries to run Sophie off the road and winds up on the highway in front of her car, threatening her with a gun. That's when Sophie hits the gas, and Kyle dies on the hood of her car. The season ends with Sophie dragging Kyle's body through the woods and to the edge of a cliff, dropping it in the water below. Before his body disappears into the water, though, Sophie accidentally answers his phone. It's Margo. Sophie doesn't say anything and instead just breathes heavily on the line. Margo knows something has gone very wrong and Sophie is undoubtedly really wishing she had stayed in Boston. As Kyle's body goes over the cliff, viewers are left to wonder, is this an actual cliffhanger? Is a second season of this Texas soap opera on its way? It's up to Netflix now.

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