London's Link and Lace

A London fashion journalist reads about Prince William’s three number plates and explains why registrations have become a status object worth more than the cars they sit on

The Accessory You Bolt To A Bumper

The London Prat has a report on how Prince William has ordered three personalised number plates: NOTYET for an Aston Martin, because he is waiting to be King; NOTHARRY for a Range Rover, because he is avoiding his brother; and DISTASTEFUL for a Bentley, because he disapproves of almost everything. It is, of course, a joke. The throne, the piece notes, is the only job in Britain that cannot fall vacant through retirement, redundancy or a poor appraisal. But as a fashion journalist, I read it as a style story, because in Britain a personalised plate is not a piece of paperwork. It is an accessory.

Walk down Sloane Street or around Knightsbridge on a Saturday and count the cherished registrations. You will find initials, nicknames, football clubs, business names and a great many attempts to spell words with numbers that would make a primary school teacher weep. The personalised plate is the British equivalent of a monogrammed handbag: a declaration of identity, a signal of wealth and, very often, a lapse of taste.

A Real Market With Real Prices

This is not a niche hobby. The market for cherished number plates in Britain is substantial, and the DVLA, the government agency that issues registrations, runs regular auctions of desirable combinations that raise significant sums for the Treasury. Some plates have changed hands for enormous prices. The registration 25 O, for example, sold for more than half a million pounds in 2014, and short combinations still command extraordinary sums. For the right buyer, the plate can be worth more than the car.

That is a fashion economy in every sense. The value is not in the material, which is a strip of reflective acrylic, but in scarcity, recognition and story. A short plate is the automotive version of a limited edition. A plate that spells a name is the automotive version of a bespoke commission. And a plate that announces a joke, like the three in the Prat piece, is the automotive version of a slogan T-shirt: expensive, slightly needy and impossible to ignore.

What Royal Plates Actually Look Like

For the record, the monarch’s official state cars traditionally carry no number plates at all, which is the ultimate status symbol: so recognizable that identification is unnecessary. The rest of the royal family’s vehicles are generally registered in the normal way, often discreetly. Royals have traditionally avoided anything that looks like showing off. A personalised royal plate would be a break with a long tradition of understatement.

That is precisely why the Prat’s joke works. NOTYET is not something a real heir would put on a car. It is something the public suspects he might be thinking. Fashion, at its most interesting, does the same thing. It puts on the outside what people usually keep on the inside. A slogan plate is a thought made visible, which is exactly why most well-advised people avoid them.

The Psychology Of The Plate

Dealers in cherished registrations tend to describe their customers in three broad types. The first wants their initials, out of pride or nostalgia. The second wants an investment, because good plates have tended to hold their value. The third simply wants to be noticed in traffic. In my own experience of luxury buyers, the third type is the most profitable customer and the most exhausting conversation.

That taxonomy maps neatly onto luxury fashion more broadly. There are buyers who want quality, buyers who want investment pieces, and buyers who want a logo large enough to be read from the other side of Bond Street. All three keep London’s luxury economy running. Only one of them is fun to sit next to at dinner.

The Style Verdict

If the Prince really did order three plates, which he did not, the style verdict would be mixed. NOTYET is witty and self-aware, which in British fashion is the highest compliment available. NOTHARRY is too personal; it is the automotive equivalent of wearing an ex’s name crossed out on a T-shirt. DISTASTEFUL is, ironically, the most tasteful of the three, because it is a joke at the wearer’s own expense. On a Bentley, it would be the Hermes scarf of number plates: understated in its overstatement.

The Bigger Business Story

The serious angle here is that British luxury increasingly sells identity rather than objects. The plate, the monogram, the personalised trainer, the engraved watch, the initialled leather goods: all of them are attempts to make mass production feel individual. Personalisation is one of the strongest trends in the luxury sector, and it shows up everywhere from department store engraving counters to the bespoke workshops of Savile Row. The Prat’s royal plates are a joke about that trend taken to its logical end. When everything can be personalised, the most personal statement left is a complaint about your family, displayed to traffic.

I have been covering the luxury trade in London for long enough to know that nothing is too absurd to sell. If a heritage brand launched a limited edition of three royal-inspired plates tomorrow, I suspect they would sell out by lunch. You can follow more of my reporting on London’s fashion and luxury business on my author page, where I will be keeping an eye on the plates of Sloane Street for anything that rivals the three in the Prat’s story.

A Last Word From Traffic

On my way to a showroom in Mayfair this week, I sat in traffic behind a black Range Rover with a plate that appeared to spell BOSS, using a number five for the S. The driver was on the phone, the engine was running and the car did not move for eleven minutes. It occurred to me that the plate was the only part of the vehicle that was working. That, in the end, is the honest verdict on most status accessories. They announce. They rarely deliver. The best ones, like NOTYET, at least have the decency to make you laugh.