Kate Middleton's Royal Wedding: all the latest fashion news
After months of claiming to know the true identity of the 'chosen one' - maintaining all along that it was a relatively unknown female designer who Middleton has worn in public before - Huffington Post's Royal Correspondent Yvonne Yorke has at last decided to spill the beans…
"I'm now ready to reveal information I first heard from my sources four months ago: Sophie Cranston of the Libélula label is believed to have won the coveted commission to make Catherine's wedding dress."
Keen observers may recall Middleton wearing a black velvet dress coat by Libélula to a friend's wedding in Yorkshire in January, but beyond that, it's likely you will draw a blank on this relatively unknown British label and it's soon-to-be-besieged designer.
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So, who is Sophie Cranston? And, if this story is to be believed, how did she land the hottest commission in fashion, sweeping aside the bookies favourites, Bruce Oldfield and Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen?
Cranston, 34, a young British designer with a romantic and bohemian background, is a graduate of the University of Northumbria, who won the Student Collection of the Year award at Graduate Fashion Week in 1999, with a tongue-in-cheek collection called 'The Morning After the Night Before', which featured a male model wearing only a striped cashmere cushion.
After cutting her teeth under Alexander McQueen, Sophie joined Alice Temperley - another designer whose name has been in the frame for the royal appointment - in 2000, and was instrumental in helping her establish the Temperley label. Then, in an about-turn, she suddenly decided to move to Andalucia to learn Flamenco and Spanish. It was here, in a small, white-washed village in Southern Spain that she established her own label Libélula - Spanish for dragonfly.
She rapidly gained a loyal band of high-profile followers, including Emma Watson, Tamara Eccleston, and Jerry Hall, with her signature vibrant prints and beautifully cut, timeless and flattering shapes. Cranston currently creates two ready-to-wear fashion collections a year from her studio in Dulwich, plus a fledgling bridal range, which The Daily Telegraph's Celia Walden chose for her marriage to Piers Morgan in June last year.
Yorke's sources told her "the reason the palace did not announce the designer's name (as they did with the Emanuels who were confirmed just one month after Diana's engagement) was to protect Cranston and her family from media scrutiny for as long as possible and to allow her the freedom to create the wedding gown of Catherine's dreams without additional pressures and distractions."
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Let us hope Cranston has spent this borrowed time preparing for what is about to happen next. If indeed she is the chosen one, her label is about to go stratospheric, and with audiences for the Royal Wedding estimated to run into the billions, she is poised to become the most famous fashion designer on earth overnight.
