She resembled any ordinary, frazzled mother tasked with supervising three young children on a long-haul flight.
As she chased her offspring up and down the aisle, at the time all aged five or under and excited to be on the way to the family’s Christmas break in St Barts, her fellow passengers were impressed with her hands-on approach, despite the family nanny also being on board.
Other British Airways travellers on the Heathrow to Antigua flight in December 2022 were further stunned when they realised the woman was none other than Pippa Middleton, sister of the future queen.
Not only that but her husband, hedge fund financier James Matthews, was sitting in the row behind his family, seemingly oblivious while reading the Daily Telegraph.
Pippa, James and their three children – Arthur, now six, Grace, four, and Rose, two – were on their way to see his parents, Jane and David Matthews, at their lavish Eden Rock hotel on the Caribbean island.
Surprisingly, they were not travelling first or business class, but World Traveller Plus.
To those also seated in the premium economy cabin, the encounter revealed how down-to-earth Pippa – who some years ago was ridiculed for her book on how to host the perfect party – now is.
‘James was sitting reading the paper,’ said one onlooker. ‘Pippa was running around after the kids, one of them very young, and she just got on with it. There was no complaining, no drama.’
The following day Pippa, 41, was pictured looking rather incredible on the beach – as did her sister-in-law Vogue Williams earlier this week when she was soaking up the sun at Eden Rock with husband Spencer, the reality TV star-turned-entrepreneur.
Despite marrying into the same wealthy family and both now mothers to three young children, the contrasts between the two could not be more stark.
Vogue Williams with Pippa Middleton at Spencer Matthews’ launch of The Clean Liquor Company, at The Trading House in London
One associate of Vogue’s tells me: ‘She and Pippa are very different, as are James and Spencer. You can’t help but wonder what conversations go on between Pippa and her family about Vogue.’
For not only do Pippa and James highly value their privacy, they also like to remain low-key.
Despite being billionaires, Pippa and James’s premium economy flight shows their desire to stay under the radar.
Although it’s not known what class of air travel Vogue and Spencer prefer on their regular trips to St Barts, the couple have a penchant for private jets – they used one for the short trip to their 2018 wedding in Scotland.
As for parenting, it’s hard to imagine that the woman who supervised her children with little input from her husband on a nine-hour flight would moan about the imbalance of chores at home. Last month, Vogue, 39, revealed on the Netmums Podcast that she juggles most of the domestic chores and childcare duties, prompting spats between the couple.
Hosts Wendy Golledge and Alison Perry asked Vogue if she and Spencer had a ‘role reversal situation’, where she ‘fixes the broken radiator’ while he ‘does the school run’.
The TV presenter candidly admitted: ‘In the nicest way possible, I would say I fix the broken radiator and I do the school run.’
She added: ‘I would say I do 80 per cent [of what goes on]. We’ve actually been having a slight little tiff about that this morning, about the stuff that I do.’ She laughed and said: ‘I’ve had enough today!’ On her own podcast with her sister, Vogue & Amber, she gave more insight into their home life, revealing how youngest son, Otto, had left Spencer ‘raging’ after waking him in the early hours.
You also have to wonder whether Pippa would, like Vogue, abruptly leave her husband if he’d completed a record-breaking 30 desert marathons in 30 days.
Jetting out to Jordan with their three children on the penultimate day of his staggering achievement in August last year, Vogue promptly flew back to her native Ireland to launch her skincare brand, leaving her husband to return with their offspring. In London the day after, Spencer enjoyed a pizza party with family and friends – minus Vogue. Of course, any busy family experiences time apart and this week the couple were very much united as they visited Spencer’s parents.
Pippa with her husband James Matthews attending Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018
Vogue pictured next to her husband Spencer Matthews at the 2023 Baftas
Although Pippa and James often visit the island too, the last time the families were both there was in 2019 when Pippa and Vogue were pictured going for a run together. Vogue wore an animal print bikini top, Pippa a sporty black vest top. They appeared to be smiling, but their grins seemed strained.
‘You wonder what they have to talk about,’ says a former colleague of Vogue’s. ‘They are totally different people but forced together through marrying their husbands.’
But for all their contrasts, friends of the family say that Jane Matthews treats her daughters-in-law the same. Indeed, both have rooms at Eden Rock named after them.
The ‘Pippa Suite’ is seen as one of the resort’s signature offers, costing holidaymakers £2,825 at peak season. The Eden Rock website describes the lavish, one-bed suite as a ‘superyacht on land’.
Meanwhile, Villa Vogue is a new-build said to offer ‘Provencal-style decor’, its own pool and ‘picture-perfect views over St Jean Bay’, which could set you back nearly £20,000.
Yet it would appear the families rarely time their visits to overlap. Last year, Pippa and James spent the February half term there while Spencer and Vogue visited five weeks later in April and then again in July. Moreover, they’ve never been spotted socialising together in the UK.
‘It makes you think they are not exactly in the same tribe,’ said a pal of Vogue’s. ‘You wonder what they would talk about. If you were Pippa, you’d think Vogue was a bit tacky.’ One could certainly imagine Pippa’s reaction to Vogue using her sunshine break to plug her clothing range, Gen.
Posting pictures to Instagram of her children playing on the beach, she wrote: ‘Seeing our kids in my range is the coolest feeling ever! I’m so glad how it’s all turned out, they look so cute in everything.’
Pippa, meanwhile, has no public Instagram profile and the world has never seen her children’s faces.
And while the two couples live a little over a mile away from each other in London, their homes are polar opposites.
Pippa and James live in a £17million, five-storey property on one of the most sought-after streets in west London, boasting an underground cinema, a lift, a ‘staff room’ and six bedrooms – with separate male and female dressing rooms off the master bedroom. They also have a £15million, 32-bedroom Georgian mansion in Berkshire set in 150 acres, which they purchased in 2022 in an off-market sale.
Vogue and Spencer have a modern apartment in Battersea. The two-storey new-build – which they’re trying to sell so they can move to their ‘forever home’ – has an open plan kitchen-living area, four bedrooms as well as a home gym, bar-cinema room and sauna.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the sisters-in-law were going to be different – their husbands are chalk and cheese too.
Both educated at the prestigious £60,000-a-year Eton College, James later trained as a trader at Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, now part of Goldman Sachs.
He became a senior equity options trader at Nordic Options Ltd and now runs his own hedge fund, Eden Rock Capital Management Group.
Spencer, meanwhile, jetted off to the sunny University of Southern California to study film before starting a career in reality TV courtesy of Made In Chelsea. Recently, after documenting his struggles with alcohol, he launched CleanCo non-alcoholic spirits.
James has never publicly spoken about his and Spencer’s brother, Michael, who is presumed dead after going missing on Mount Everest in a snowstorm in 1999. Spencer, however, made a documentary for Disney+ about his older brother’s disappearance, Finding Michael.
That, say those who know Spencer, sums up how different the brothers are – and perhaps why they have such different wives.
‘Spencer is brash and James is understated,’ says a friend. ‘Just like Vogue and Pippa.’
