Meghan Markle may have used her Nigeria tour wardrobe to send a message to the Royal Family, according to a royal commentator.

The Duchess of Sussex donned a wide range of outfits during the whirlwind visit to the West African country she carried out earlier this month with Prince Harry.

Her fashion choices included a £1566 Johanna Oritz’s Summer Counts Dress with a plunging neckline, the bright yellow Carolina Herrera dress she donned to announce she was expecting Princess Lilibet Diana, an Altuzarra all-white suit and a stunning striped Nigerian skirt fastened at her waist.

These choices were in stark contrast with the clothes she would have likely needed to wear had she been on an official royal tour, the Mail on Sunday’s Editor at Large Charlotte Griffiths believes.

Appearing on the Mail+’s royal programme Palace Confidential, Ms Griffiths said: “This was a pseudo royal tour. On a real royal tour, Meghan would have had to wear jackets and blazers and things like that like royals do.”

Arguing Meghan may have sent a veiled message through her styling choices, the expert added: “That might have been the point because we know that Meghan uses how she dresses now that she is no longer a working royal to make a point about how constrained she was before.

“And that’s why she wears a lot of colours now, because she has spoken a lot about how she had to wear beige before, and we know that she found it very constraining that she was told how to dress when she was a member of the Royal Family.”

The expert referred to remarks made by the Duchess during the Netflix’s Harry & Meghan docu-series released in December 2022.

Then, Meghan claimed to have “rarely worn colour” while a senior royal in the UK.

She said: “There was thought in that. To my understanding, you can’t ever wear the same colour as Her Majesty [Queen Elizabeth II] if there’s a group event.

“But then you also should never be wearing the same colour as one of the other more senior members of the family. So I was like, ‘Well what’s a colour that they’ll probably never wear?’ Camel? Beige? White?”

The California-based Duchess added her choice was also to make her “blend in” and not to let people think she was trying to “stand out” with bright colours.